It’s almost as if Natalee Holloway’s story was repeating itself all over again. Sudiksha Konanki, 20, is a junior in biology at the University of Pittsburgh, according to the Loudoun County, Virginia, Sheriff’s Office. She is an Indian citizen and permanent U.S. resident who lives with her family in Chantilly, Virginia, which is in Loudoun County.

She traveled to Punta Cana from Pitt on March 3, with five female friends for spring break. She was last seen early March 6 after she went to the beach with friends and an American male named Joshua Riibe. Joshua was seen on camera with University of Pittsburgh student Sudiksha in the early hours of March 6 at the Riu Republica Resort in Punta Cana. They were seen walking out to the beach, Joshua with his arm around Sudiksha, with two of Sudiksha’s friends behind her and Joshua with his arm out to what appeared to be him filming both of them together. ”Joshua said he first met Sudiksha in the hotel when he and his friend introduced themselves to Sudiksha’s group.

The man who was with her, Joshua Steven Joshua, told prosecutors he and Sudiksha were hit by an intense wave and were swept out to sea when the water returned. Joshua, a 22-year-old from Rock Rapids, Iowa, is not considered a suspect in the case and has not been accused of wrongdoing. Joshua is a senior at St Cloud State University in Minnesota

Ms Sudiksha stayed on the beach with Joshua as the others returned to the hotel. Well I hope her friends don’t feel too bad about leaving her with a complete stranger in an unknown place. Yes she is old enough to do what she wants, but I wouldn’t call them friends who don’t look out for each other in certain types of situations. Dominican President Luis Abinader said earlier this week during a news conference that he was the last person who had contact with Ms Sudiksha. The parents of the man Joshua Riibe, released a statement saying they hope Ms Sudiksha is “found as soon as possible”. “We recognize that this is a complex and painful situation for all parties involved, and we trust that the investigation will be conducted with transparency and justice. Our only interest is that due process be respected and that actions be taken with the fairness that the situation requires,” the statement reads.

Joshua told cops they had kissed in the ocean before they almost got swept away by a wave. He said he saved her from drowning while almost losing consciousness. He refused to answer some questions however, with officers probing him over how they could be sure what he was saying was truthful. Riibe was also asked about what he told his close friend about Sudiksha and what he thought about her disappearance.  He was also asked if he knew if Sudiksha was able to swim, if she made any gestures or cries in the sea, if he called the cops or told the hotel.  To all of those questions, he said: ‘My lawyers advise me not to answer that question and I follow their advice’, before going silent… Now I have seen before, authorities pressuring people into confessing something they didn’t do… So i hope that is not the case here, but it doesn’t appear to have happened. I guess we will know more later.

During his fourth interview with prosecutors on Wednesday, Joshua described a harrowing attempt to save Sudiksha after they were jostled by the wave and she got tired of swimming. “It took me a long time to get her out. It was difficult” He said he was trained as a lifeguard, but worked at pools, not at the beach. “I was trying to get her to breathe the whole time. That didn’t allow me to breathe all the time, and I swallowed a lot of water. I could have lost consciousness several times. When I finally reached the ground on the beach, I held her in front of me.”

He said he last saw Konanki when she was walking in knee-deep water. “The last time I saw her, I asked if she was OK. I didn’t hear her answer because I started vomiting up all the seawater I had swallowed.” “After vomiting, I looked around, and I didn’t see anyone. I thought she had grabbed her things and left,” Joshua said. “I felt very sick and tired. I lay down on a beach chair and fell asleep because I couldn’t go far. ”The sun and biting mosquitoes woke Joshua up, he said, and he went to his friend’s room to get his phone and then went to his room to sleep. “I was sleeping in the room and my friend asked me if I had seen her; I told him no, I thought she had gone to her room,” Joshua said. His friend told him Sudiksha never returned to her room, which Joshua said “surprised” him. When asked if he saw Konanki after that night on the beach, Joshua said, “After I saw her walk away while she was walking in the water, I never saw her again.”

Since the incident, Joshua, who was in the Dominican Republic on spring break vacation with a classmate, said he has only been in his room being interviewed. His aunt, Theresa, asked for privacy in a statement. “Our family is going through a very difficult time right now, and we’re experiencing a lot of sadness and pain,” the statement said. “We kindly ask for privacy as we navigate this challenging moment together.

Konanki was at the resort with five other female students from the University of Pittsburgh, according to the sheriff’s office in Loudoun County, Virginia, where her family lives. The two friend groups went to the bar together where they drank until “someone suggested we go to the beach,” Joshua said in his interview. Two of the females stayed behind. Sudiksha was last seen on surveillance camera with seven other people entering the beach at the Riu República Hotel in Punta Cana after 4:15 a.m. March 6.

Before heading to the beach, surveillance footage shows the group of Americans, Konanki, five other women and two men had been drinking in the hotel’s lobby around 3 a.m, a source said. Around 4:55 a.m. Thursday, surveillance cameras captured five women and one man leaving the beach, while Konanki is believed to have stayed behind with the other young man, two sources close to the investigation. Surveillance video shows the man leaving the beach area at 8:55 a.m., the two sources close to the investigation said, with no sign of Sudiksha.

When Sudiksha didn’t return to her room, her companions initially searched for her before notifying authorities, according to the law enforcement source. The group then reported her missing to the hotel staff around 4 p.m. Thursday, the Riu hotel chain said in a statement. She had gone to Punta Cana for spring break, her father, Subbarayudu Konanki, said. “My daughter is a very nice girl,” he said. “She’s ambitious. She wanted to pursue a career in medicine.”

Konanki’s father wants local authorities “to also investigate other possibilities including whether this is a case of kidnapping or human trafficking,” he told CNN on Sunday from Punta Cana. “We don’t think she would be able to survive for more than three days in the water and I think something else might’ve happened to her.”

The sheriff’s office in Loudoun County, Virginia, also urged caution around “public speculation” about Konanki’s disappearance, according to a Monday news release.

“There has been considerable public speculation about what may have happened to Sudiksha and who may be involved,” the sheriff’s office said. “We caution anyone from drawing any unsubstantiated conclusions and are committed to ensuring that a thorough investigation is conducted before any conclusions are reached.”She disappeared after 4:15 a.m., after her friends left the beach but she stayed behind with people she met on the trip.

Loudoun County Sheriff Michael Chapman told NBC Washington on Monday that Konanki’s friends returned to the hotel after about 40 minutes and that Sudiksha stayed with the others whom she met and who were not friends from college.

One of the last people who had contact with her said that “a wave hit them while they were on the beach and caused some kind of situation,” Dominican President Luis Abinader said at a news conference Monday, citing local reports. Abinader said at the time that authorities were trying to piece together what happened.

Konanki’s friends went on an excursion Thursday and did not realize she had disappeared until they returned, about 12 hours later, at which point they told the hotel about their missing friend. National Police launched a search effort Friday morning, using drones, helicopters, divers, boats and canine units. The search effort was expanded Monday Sudiksha’s friends were supposed to return to the United States on Friday but stayed back to aid in the search, sheriff’s spokesperson Thomas Julia said. The hotel said that beach access is always open and that security guards are stationed around the hotel and the area. 

Sudiksha family traveled to Punta Cana to aid in search efforts but returned to Virginia. They declined to comment on the search. La Altagracia Civil Defense, the local Dominican emergency operations agency, shared photos of multiple agencies searching the beach over the weekend. The hotel was also assisting in search efforts, it said. Authorities have said it’s not clear whether Sudiksha’s disappearance is accidental or whether foul play was involved. No signs of blood or violence were found at the beach, Pesqueira said.

National Police sent teams to monitor the beach overnight at least twice to watch how the water moves to see where a body would drift if someone drowned and to see where the waves crash. A hotel spokesperson said red flags which indicate “that the sea had a strong current and very high waves” were flying when Sudiksha disappeared. Dominican authorities said Thursday morning that the search was moving from the Riu Republic Resort to Macao Beach.

Officials are also looking into Konanki’s phone and texts, said Chapman, the Loudoun County sheriff. She did not appear to have a history of excessive drinking, he said. The sheriff’s office said it filed for Interpol to issue a yellow notice, a worldwide police alert for a missing person, which will alert authorities if she travels to another country. “We are going on the presumption that she’s still alive,” Chapman said Monday. “We want to make sure that we’re exhausting every possible lead that we can, and we feel we’re doing that. “Officials said they’ve spent dozens of hours looking for Ms Sudiksha.

A person of interest is “not the same thing as a suspect, as this is not a criminal matter. It is still a missing person case,” Julia said. National Police said Thursday morning that they do not use the term “person of interest” in their investigations and that no one is considered a suspect at this point.  Joshua may have been the last person to see Sudiksha alive. He told local investigators they were on the beach “in waist-deep water, talking and kissing a little,” according to a transcript of the interview. Then, a wave crashed, sweeping them both “out to sea,” Riibe said in the interview. “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 said. He told local authorities that he used to work as a lifeguard and that he made sure to get them both back to shore. That’s when she disappeared, he said. “The last time I saw her, I asked if she was OK. I didn’t hear her answer,” he said. “I looked around and didn’t see anyone. I thought she’d grabbed her things and left.” 

According to the interview, Riibe said he was surprised to later learn that Konanki was missing. The passport of Joshua Riibe, an American linked to the disappearance of a University of Pittsburgh student, has been confiscated by Dominican authorities as part of an ongoing investigation, his attorneys said. Riibe “has been confined to the hotel since the investigation began. He is permanently escorted by the police anywhere he goes. So no, he is not free to leave,” his law firm said on Saturday.

When I first read about her disappearance and the circumstances of it happening, I immediately thought that Joshua might be to blame. I have a feeling that he might have pressured her into have sex with him, she refused, he might, or might have not, raped her, choke her in the water and leave her lifeless body in the water to be swept away. She might have drowned, but I find Joshua’s account of the incident really weird, not making much sense, not adding up and that something just isn’t right. He is being really vague with authorities, avoiding certain questions, refusing to answer others. His family says that he is “such a nice young man, he would never ever hurt someone”… Well it’s often the case isn’t it, when someone appears to be nice, you would never think in a million years that they would be capable of such a heinous crime, as killing someone… but you never know.

Now that they have seized his passport and he is not free to leave, I have a feeling that he might be becoming a little more, over the next few days, than a person of interest. Young people need to be more careful when going on vacation in other countries. You never know who you are going to meet and what kind of person they really are. It’s so easy for young women to get quickly infatuated with men. At a young age, we are a bit naive, we don’t have much life experience and we easily trust other people.

Update : Well now her clothes have been found on a a beach chair… Umm I find that odd that they just now found her clothes. With all the searching that has been going on with drones, dogs, the many people that have been searching for her and nobody found those clothes ON the beach before yesterday ? Joshua said that she took her things and left.. What things ? She only had a bikini, coverall and maybe a short ? But those were found on that chair. That seems a little bit weird to me. Why would she go back in the water according to him when she almost just drowned ? In any cases that they found her body in the water, (She obviously isn’t on land anymore i don’t think) her body will have decayed to a point that physical clues will be completely vanished. Why i am so quick to put the blame on Joshua, while he might be innocent, his story just seem really weird to me. It’s really vague, not many details and it just seem really strange to me, a few inconsistencies in Joshua’s claims, as well as some things that just don’t make any sense.

I really hoped they would find her alive but i doubt this very much, especially after her clothes were found.

Update 2 : Well her parents are insisting to have their daughter declared dead after almost two weeks of Sudiksha missing. I just watched a video of her parents asking the Dominican Republic to have their daughter declared dead, which will end all search for the missing young woman. Watching the sadness and pain of the loss of Sudiksha’s parents really breaks my heart. It’s hard in a situation like this to get some kind of closure when a body is not found and the circumstances surrounding the death of a child are not clear, but they believe that she drowned.

Joshua is now in court asking for his passport to be returned so he can return to the United States.

What are your thoughts ?