Newly emerged footage shows missing University of Pittsburgh student Sudiksha Konanki and the person of interest in her case at an outdoor bar before she disappeared from a Punta Cana beach earlier this month.
Konanki, 20, can be seen in a pair of videos obtained by local outlet Noticia SIN – including one in which she and friends are hanging at a resort bar near a struggling man who appears to be a person of interest Joshua Riibe.
The co-ed, who was on spring break in the Dominican Republic, vanished in the early hours of March 6, sparking a desperate search and swirling questions about what happened to her.
In one of the clips, the pre-med pupil and her three friends are at the bar before one of the girls, which the local outlet identified as Konanki, puts her hand to her mouth and quickly excuses herself to hunch over a patch of grass a few feet away.
The same girl then walks back to the bar and excitedly jumps up and down before hugging one of her girlfriends, the video shows.
Meanwhile, a young man believed to be Riibe can be seen separately bent over and struggling outside the bar as another young man comforts him. The man — who stumbles backward at one point — appears to be wearing the same clothing Riibe wore in previously released surveillance footage of him and Konanki walking arm-in-arm less than two hours before she vanished.
The pair do not interact in the footage from the bar and seem to be in separate groups.
A second video shows a group of four girls, including Konanki, palling around the lobby of the RIU Hotel & Resort hours leading up to her disappearance.
While local authorities initially said they believed the Indian national drowned in the ocean during rough surf in the early morning after taking a dip with Riibe, they have not ruled out foul play.
Riibe, a 22-year-old senior at St. Cloud University, is under police monitoring and has faced grilling by investigators. His passport has also been pulled so he can’t leave the country until authorities allow him to.
While considered a person of interest, the Iowa native has not been accused of wrongdoing or charged with a crime in the Virginia student’s disappearance.
He claimed he pulled Konanki out of the ocean and then passed out after inadvertently gulping down seawater.
When he woke back up, he went back to his hotel room and assumed she also left the beach.
Riibe’s parents pleaded for transparency from cops last week, claiming their son has been detained under irregular conditions.
Additional reporting by Jorge Fitz-Gibbon
