Featured Image Credit: Law and Crime Network
Topics: World News
Joe Harker
There has been an update in the case of a missing university student who disappeared on a trip to a Caribbean island.
20-year-old student Sudiksha Konanki disappeared on 6 March after taking a spring break trip to the Dominican Republic, with she and five friends travelling out on 3 March where they stayed at the Riu Hotel in Punta Cana.
Three days later she went missing after she went to the beach with her friends, and then decided to stay there with people she'd met on the trip after her friends decided to leave.
According to police in the Dominican Republic, CCTV footage showed Sudiksha and those with her near the beach at around 4:15am local time on 6 March.
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The country's President, Luis Abinader, said that authorities were trying to work out what happened and said at a news conference that 'a wave hit them while they were on the beach and caused some kind of situation'.
The student's friends went out later that day and when they returned to their hotel they realised she was missing.
A search effort was launched the following morning (7 March) including helicopters, divers, drones and dogs but there has still been no sign of the missing woman.
An American man named Joshua Riibe is thought to have been the last person to see the woman alive, and in an update on the case his legal representatives told NBC News that Dominican authorities had confiscated his passport as part of their ongoing investigation.
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He told the outlet: "I’m just trying to help them out. The ocean is a dangerous place."
His representatives said that Riibe 'has been confined to the hotel since the investigation began' and 'is permanently escorted by the police anywhere he goes' meaning he was 'not free to leave'.
Riibe told investigators that he and the missing woman were 'in waist-deep water, talking and kissing a little' but they were swept 'out to sea' by a wave.
He said he was able to get the missing woman back to shore and was shocked to hear she'd gone missing.
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"I kept trying to get her to breathe, but that didn't allow me to breathe all the time, and I swallowed a lot of water," he claimed.
"The last time I saw her, I asked if she was OK. I didn't hear her answer, I looked around and didn't see anyone. I thought she'd grabbed her things and left."
Riibe has not been named as a suspect.