The family of missing college student Sudiksha Konanki has asked authorities that she be declared deceased, the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office in Virginia told CBS News, almost two weeks after she disappeared while visiting Punta Cana for spring break.
The family provided the request in writing to the sheriff’s office, according to spokesperson Thomas Julia. Julia said the family made a similar request to Dominican authorities. According to the sheriff’s office, the family has expressed a desire for closure.
In a statement later on Tuesday, Loudoun County Sheriff Michael Chapman said the family also expressed their belief that she drowned.
“While a final decision to make such a declaration rests with authorities in the Dominican Republic, we will support the Konanki family in every way possible as we continue to review the evidence and information made available to us in the course of this investigation,” Chapman said.
Konanki’s family did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The student, 20, was last seen in the early morning hours of March 6 on a beach near the resort town’s Riu República hotel where she and her friends and had been staying. Surveillance video from the night she disappeared showed Konanki walking toward the beach with a group of three women and two men, one of whom authorities identified as 22-year-old Joshua Riibe, who is presumed to be the last person to see her alive. She and Riibe stayed behind on the beach after the four others left, a police source told CBS News, citing video footage.
Riibe told police he and Konanki were swept into the ocean by a large wave and struggled in rough waters. He said he believed Konanki made it out of the water but was not certain, according to a person with direct knowledge of Riibe’s statements to U.S. investigators.
Konanki lives in the D.C. suburb Loudon, Virginia, and attends the University of Pittsburgh. Her disappearance sparked a missing persons investigation and massive search effort by authorities in the Dominican Republic and the United States, with agencies probing land, sea and air in hopes of locating her. The Dominican Republic National Police said they created a new “high-level commission” to oversee the case, while Interpol issued a missing person alert to police around the world.
Authorities in the U.S. and the Dominican Republic have repeatedly emphasized that this is so far not a criminal investigation. Dominican Attorney General Yeni Berenice Reynoso said investigators are exploring whether Konanki may have drowned but have not ruled out the possibility of foul play. In their request that law enforcement declare her dead, Konanki’s family referenced the lack of evidence suggesting foul play so far.
Since Konanki vanished, Reynoso has directly interrogated Riibe, a student at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota who is originally from Iowa, the law firm representing Riibe, Guzmán Ariza, told CBS News. Authorities confiscated Riibe’s passport while holding him for questioning in Punta Cana and assigning him “permanent” police escorts, Guzmán Ariza said.
Riibe’s attorney has been pushing for his release, noting in legal filings that his client has not been charged with a crime, local media reported. A hearing on that issue was set for later Tuesday.
Chapman described Riibe as “very forthcoming” in interviews with two of the sheriff’s detectives who traveled to Punta Cana last week to discuss the case with him. In a “CBS Mornings” interview, Chapman said Riibe “didn’t seem to hesitate on answering any of the questions that we threw his way,” echoing previous comments from Riibe’s attorneys and parents, who said in a statement that their son “is deeply dismayed” by Konanki’s disappearance “and has fully cooperated in the search and clarification of the facts from the very beginning.”
Chapman said any inconsistencies in Riibe’s statements “were really quite minor and nothing that would really make us feel as though there was anything untrue coming from Joshua.”
Asked if there’s anything that indicates Konanki’s disappearance is more than an accident, Chapman said, “It’s hard to say” and acknowledged that some questions remain unanswered, including what happened after Konanki and Riibe were allegedly in the water.
“We also don’t know what happened between the time that [Riibe] claimed to have come out of the water and the time that he actually left the beach, so it’s really hard to say,” he said. “It’d be speculative on my part to assume or presume anything at this point.”
Anna Schecter,
and
Manuel Bojorquez
contributed to this report.
