'Person of interest' named in disappearance of Pitt student in Dominican Republic

Megan Guza, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Mar 12, 2025

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Authorities have named a person of interest in the disappearance of University of Pittsburgh student Sudiksha Konanki, who went missing last week on a spring break trip to the Dominican Republic.

A spokesman for the sheriff's office in Loudoun County, Virginia, where Konanki is from, told the Post-Gazette on Wednesday morning that 24-year-old Joshua Riibe has been named a "person of interest" in connection with the 20-year-old pre-med student's disappearance.

"This is not at this time a criminal investigation," spokesman Chad Quinn said in an email, "so to be clear, he is not a suspect."

Quinn said Riibe is a U.S. citizen who was vacationing in Punta Cana but was not part of Konanki's group. He said Riibe might have been the last person to see Konanki, "so (he) is of particular interest."

Konanki and five friends arrived in Punta Cana for spring break March 3, officials said. Konanki was reported missing Thursday afternoon, about 12 hours after she was last seen on a beach near the Riu Republica Resort.

On Tuesday, ABC News reported that investigators found Konanki's clothes on a portable beach bed "close to the beach where she went missing."

Dominican police said in a social media post Tuesday evening they were "intensifying their search by air, sea and land." According to the translated post, more than 300 investigators and searchers were out Tuesday combing the coast and area around the hotel.

Security footage obtained by the Dominican news program Noticas SIN appeared to show Konanki walking toward the beach with her friends and two men, which aligns with what authorities in Punta Cana have told multiple U.S. news outlets.

Authorities said the footage captured Konanki, her friends and two men walking toward the beach shortly after 4 a.m. Thursday. Just before 6 a.m., footage showed the five friends and one of the men returning from the beach. The other man is seen returning from the beach with no sign of Konanki just before 10 a.m.

A police source told CNN that the man last seen with Konanki has been questioned multiple times. The outlet reported earlier this week that the man had given varying accounts of when he last saw the missing woman but clarified Wednesday via another source that there were "no significant inconsistencies in the man's recounting" and that "translation issues may have been a reason for the differences."

Konanki's father, Subbarayudu Konanki, told WTOP News in Washington, D.C., over the weekend that he wanted authorities to widen the scope of the investigation.

"It's four days, and if she was in water, she would likely have been strewn to shore," Konanki told the radio station. "She's not found, so we're asking them to investigate multiple options, like kidnapping or abduction."

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