The Last Person To See Her Alive Keeps Lying

The last person to see 20-year-old Sudiksha Konanki before she vanished from a Dominican beach has changed his account of what happened—three times.

Konanki, a pre-med student from the University of Pittsburgh, was vacationing with five friends at the Riu Republica Resort in Punta Cana. In the early hours of Thursday morning, after a night of partying, she walked down to the beach with a man she’d just met—Joshua Steven Ribe, a 24-year-old tourist from Iowa. Hours later, Konanki was gone. Ribe, who admitted he passed out drunk on the sand, now stands at the center of the growing mystery.

Her family fears she may have been kidnapped.

A Night of Partying—and a Missing Friend

Konanki and her friends were captured on resort surveillance footage dancing at a nightclub until 3am They then made their way to the beach around 4am By 5:50am, the group left, except for Konanki and Ribe. According to reports, he was the last person to see her alive.

What happened next remains murky. Ribe has offered three different versions of events, according to Dominican news outlet El Nacional.

First, he claimed he got sick from the rough waves, stepped out of the water, and checked if Konanki was okay. In another account, he said he last saw her in knee-deep water before blacking out. In a third version, he said he fell asleep on the beach and woke up to find her gone.

Despite the contradictions, Ribe has not been named a suspect. Dominican police say he is cooperating with the investigation.

The Delay in Reporting Her Missing

Konanki’s friends waited almost 12 hours before reporting her missing. According to the media, they didn’t alert authorities until 4pm on Thursday—long after she’d disappeared.

By then, any trace of Konanki was gone.

An Urgent Search, Slim Hope

The search for Konanki has now entered its fourth day. Authorities have deployed helicopters, drones, boats, scuba divers, and all-terrain vehicles to comb the beach and surrounding waters.

But the outlook is grim.

Juan Salas, head of the Dominican Republic’s Civil Defence, told reporters the chances of finding Konanki alive are now “minimal.”

Her family, still clinging to hope, believes there’s more to the story—and they’re questioning why her friends took so long to sound the alarm.

As for Ribe, his conflicting stories continue to cast a shadow of doubt. 

The question remains: What really happened to Sudiksha Konanki on that beach?