CNN visited the beach where a missing American student spent her final moments. Here’s what we saw

Far from the pounding thrum of party music and the clamor of tipsy conversations, Konanki and Joshua Steven Riibe waded waist-deep into the water and shared a kiss, based on an account of the events Riibe relayed to investigators.

The kiss may have been one of her last moments alive, as Dominican Republic authorities believe the 20-year-old University of Pittsburgh college student drowned in the early hours of March 6, her parents have said.

 

That evening, the winds were gentle and the water was warm — hovering at a pleasant 80 degrees, according to CNN Senior Meteorologist Brandon Miller. But the water was rough in Punta Cana on the night Konanki went missing, the sheriff’s office in Virginia’s Loudoun County, where Konanki’s family lives, told CNN it was advised, though whether any warnings were in place has not been confirmed.

On Thursday, CNN returned to the beach where Konanki may have taken her final breath. The ocean, still wild, churned with waves so swift and strong, even CNN’s 6’3” reporter was almost swept off his feet when they occasionally crashed across the sand.

Two weeks after ​she vanished, the beach bore little sign of the search for Konanki, save for the brief appearance of a solitary police helicopter. No physical evidence indicative of a crime has been found and Riibe has not been considered a suspect in Konanki’s disappearance or accused of wrongdoing.

A pair of Dominican Republic National police officers patrolled the beach stretching past the Riu República Hotel and the nearby resorts. They said they are familiar with petty crimes, but nothing ever like the disappearance of a student.

“We maybe have to get a tourist’s money back after getting ripped off by someone but nothing like that,” said one officer, who was not authorized to speak publicly.

At the hotel’s main disco, the salty ocean breeze cooled the night air, thick with intoxication, as a DJ blended salsa rhythms with American club music, designed to get the crowds of American spring breakers dancing. The young tourists packed the bar, shouting orders for shots and boozy cocktails, as a dance troupe dazzled on stage to cheering spectators.

 

The disco is the heart of the Riu República, only a short distance from a lobby with pink chairs where Riibe, 22, and Konanki first met at the all-inclusive, adults only resort in Punta Cana.

Konanki was with several girlfriends, also from the University of Pittsburgh, and Riibe was with a classmate from St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, when they first crossed paths.

“My friend and I were drinking; we came back from a party, went to the Pink lobby, introduced ourselves to some girls, and she was there,” Riibe told Dominican prosecutors in an interview on March 12. It was the fourth of several interviews with investigators and the only one where CNN has been able to see a transcript of Riibe’s comments.

The college students had traveled to Punta Cana to celebrate spring break. The group drank together at around 3 a.m., ordering multiple rounds of shots before someone suggested they head to the beach, according to Riibe’s interview.

Riibe and Konanki are seen walking with their arms wrapped around each other in hotel surveillance video at 4:15 a.m. The duo swayed slightly as they appeared to capture the fleeting moment with a selfie along the hotel’s sandy, tree-lined path.

 

 

Their friends – five women and one man – surrounded them closely. Konanki looks happy and animated in a screenshot from another angle of the hotel’s surveillance video as the group moved away from the bustle of the outdoor bar to the quiet solitude of the sea.

The short walk to the beach felt longer at night. The beach was pitch-black and dangerous, the waves ferociously slamming the shore. There are no lights after passing the resort’s beach access point, but once your eyes adjust, you can see the stars with crystal clear brilliance. The distant glow of late-night parties and other resorts dotted Punta Cana’s coastline.

Riibe told prosecutors that on the night Konanki went missing, “I took off my shoes and socks, emptied my pockets, took off my shirt, put them on a chair, and went into the sea.”

Two of the women sat on the beach chairs as the others went into the ocean. Riibe and Konanki’s friends left the beach 40 minutes later at 4:55 a.m., the hotel’s surveillance video shows, leaving the pair alone.

Riibe and Konanki were chatting and kissing, he told investigators, when without warning, a fierce and unbidden wave knocked them off their feet and dragged them into the violent, restless sea.

 

Wave after wave mercilessly pulled them under. In the mere seconds they had to breathe when their heads would finally surface, they screamed for help.

“But there was no one,” Riibe said in his interview.

Battered by the waves, Konanki was getting exhausted, Riibe said. The former pool lifeguard held Konanki with one arm and swam with the other as he choked on seawater and tried not to lose consciousness.

“It took me a long time to get her out, it was difficult,” Riibe said. “I was trying to make sure she was breathing the whole time, which didn’t allow me to breathe all the time, and I swallowed a lot of water.”

When they finally neared the shore, he held her in front of him, he said. By then, they were standing in knee-deep water and Konanki was “walking at an angle in the water.”

He called out to ask if she was OK. But before he could hear her answer, he began vomiting seawater, he told Dominican authorities. When he looked up again, she was gone.

“After I saw her walk away while she was walking in the water,” Riibe said, “I never saw her again.”

She’d grabbed her belongings and went back to her room, he thought to himself, before falling into an exhausted slumber on the beach, too drained to take another step.

In the sky, the moon is carved sharply, half-lit and half-shadowed, a silent witness to the night unfolding below.

The frantic search

Biting mosquitoes and the searing touch of the sun woke Riibe up just before 9 a.m., prompting a drowsy trek back to his hotel room. Surveillance video showed he left the beach area without Konanki, sources close to the investigation said.

He later learned the University of Pittsburgh student was missing when her friends reached out to his friend asking if they’d seen her, Riibe told investigators.

Konanki’s friends searched for her before notifying authorities, according to a law enforcement source, and reported her missing to hotel staff around 4 p.m. on March 6. Their alert triggered a desperate search of land, air and sea.

 

 

 

Helicopters scanned every inch of the area from above, looking for a glimpse of Konanki’s black hair or brown bikini. Local Dominican Republic law enforcement used search dogs and drones to scan the bays, bushes and trees.

They found the white swimsuit cover-up she is believed to have left behind on a lounge chair on the beach. There were no signs of violence.

Riibe, the last person to see Konanki, was kept under watch in his Riu República hotel room for 10 days and interrogated by multiple agencies, including a more than six-hour interview by Dominican Republic Attorney General Yeni Berenice Reynoso.

Konanki’s parents, Subbarayudu and Sreedevi Konanki, traveled the 1,400 miles to Punta Cana in search of their daughter. Investigators from the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office, where the parents live, also flew in to question Riibe.

 

Konanki’s family and Loudoun County Sheriff Mike Chapman asked local authorities to widen the investigation and consider all possible avenues, including the possibility of kidnapping or human trafficking, her father told CNN.

Sinister suspicions fueled the urge to rush to conclusions. But the sheriff’s office urged caution around “public speculation” about Konanki’s disappearance, it said in a statement.

The hours after Konanki first went missing turned into days, and eventually weeks, and the desperate searches soon turned into a somber realization: Konanki, the ambitious, premed college student, cherished and adored by her family and friends, might never return home alive.

‘It could have happened to any of us’

Sreedevi Konanki covered her face with her hands and turned away from the cameras as sobs racked her body. Subbarayudu Konanki reached out to comfort her for a moment before pressing on. He kept his eyes down and read from a statement with a shaking voice, as he asked officials to declare their daughter dead.

“We are coming to the terms with the fact our daughter has drowned,” he said, licking his lips and swallowing. Without looking up, he asked people to pray for their daughter. They still have two young children to care for, he said softly.

Behind every aching word, Konanki’s mother’s weeping did not cease.

Little information regarding the Virginia native’s disappearance has trickled out from the investigation still fraught with more riddles than answers, leaving her parents and authorities all but sure she’s no longer alive.

As law enforcement officials in both the Dominican Republic and the US work to unravel the mystery, life carried on, undisturbed, at the vibrant party resort in Punta Cana.

College-aged partygoers filled the hotel, packing the dining halls, pools and the beach where Konanki was last seen.

Sunbathing college students and vacation-goers dipped in the very waters divers were combing for evidence days earlier. By the pool, a Latin beat pulsed from the bar’s speakers as a young woman’s tongue tripped over the word cerveza while ordering a beer in Spanish.

“All I can think about is damn, she was right here,” Savannah Hughes, 21, told CNN while at the resort’s beach.

The marketing major, who studies at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, said one of her friends tried to book them another hotel but everything was full.

“The waves were insane today. We didn’t even go into the ocean,” she said, recalling how she saw a young woman fall out of her beach chair when a wave knocked her over. “I can’t even imagine at nighttime being in those waves and drunk.”

 

Local police scaled down their footprint on the beach shortly after Konanki’s family asked for their daughter to be declared dead, said one hotel worker who declined to give her name to CNN.

“They (investigators) were everywhere but after that, they all left,” said the worker who was not allowed to speak publicly.

By evening, most tourists have swapped their swimsuits for party attire as they prepared to join one of the dance parties scattered throughout the resort.

Jayden Moore, a 21-year-old from Boston, gathered a big group of her friends, dressed for a night out, for a picture on the beach when a giant wave sent the vacationers scrambling for higher ground.

“Hearing that someone went missing, we were very hesitant about coming,” Moore told CNN. “She was a college student just like us. It could have happened to any of us.”

The sun, a brilliant blaze of red and orange, set on another night in Punta Cana.

Down the pathway where Riibe and Konanki had walked arm-in-arm is the same beach, dark and still as ever, with no sound except for the hushing of the ocean, her mighty waves lap at the shore.

The moon, now a brighter waning gibbous, still perches quietly.

CNN’s Mark Morales reported from Punta Cana and CNN’s Alaa Elassar reported from New York.