The investigations continue regarding the disappearance of Sudiksha Konanki, the medical student from the University of Pittsburgh. Joshua Riibe, the last person to see her on March 6, is considered a person of interest in the case. His version is that he saved her from drowning at Punta Cana Beach, Dominican Republic, but then he did not see her again.
The New York Post reported that according to Riibe, a 22-year-old student at the University of Minnesota, he went into the water with her at the beach and they kissed. The water was up to their waists, but the current’s force dragged them out to sea.
“I was a lifeguard. I grabbed her and pulled her out,” Riibe told the Public Ministry, according to a transcript obtained by Dominican Republic News Without, says The Post.
The young man (who was staying at the same Riu Republic Resort complex in Punta Cana, where Konanki was with five friends) said that when the waves dragged them, they asked for help, but nobody heard them because there were no people on the beach, it was early in the morning. He indicated that despite the strong waves and her struggling in the midst of her despair in the water, he managed to rescue her.
“It took me a long time to take her out, it was difficult. I was a lifeguard at the pool, not in the sea,” he recounted.
The last time he saw the University of Pittsburgh
The boy said that he swallowed a lot of saltwater, vomited several times, and lost consciousness on multiple occasions, but that when they were already in a safe place, the University of Pittsburgh student went back into the water to look for her things. He narrated that he could see her with the water up to her knees, walking on an “angle”.
“The last time I saw her, I asked her if she was okay... I didn’t hear her response because I started vomiting all the seawater I had swallowed.... After vomiting, I looked around and didn’t see anyone, I thought she had grabbed her things and left,” Riibe recounted.
The college student said he wasn’t feeling well, so he sat on a beach chair and fell asleep. He woke up at dawn and returned to his hotel room, where he talked to a friend before going back to sleep.
I’m sorry, but it seems like you didn’t provide any text to be translated. Could you please provide the text you would like me to translate from Spanish to English?