The parents of Sudiksha Konanki, the University of Pittsburgh student who went missing from the Dominican Republic on March 6, have spoken out after telling authorities to declare their daughter dead.
Their statement comes after they sent a letter to La Policia Nacional, the Dominican national police force, on Monday stating that “Dominican authorities have concluded that Sudiksha is believed to have drowned.”
“Both sides of the authorities have shown us how high the ocean waves were at the time of the incident,” Subbarayudu Konanki, Sudiksha’s father, told reporters on Tuesday, adding that her death has been “difficult to process.”
Sudiksha Konanki was reported missing on March 6 from the resort where she was staying in Punta Cana. It was later revealed that the 20-year-old college student went swimming during a red-flag warning with a male hotel guest, who is considered a witness in Konanki’s disappearance but not a suspect or person of interest.
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“It is with deep sadness and a heavy heart that we are coming to the terms with the fact that our daughter is gone,” Subbarayudu said Tuesday.
The witness, 22-year-old Joshua Riibe of Iowa, apparently told Dominican authorities that while they were swimming, a large wave crashed over them, according to a translated transcript of his interview to police shared with Fox News.
He said he tried to help her and last saw her wading through knee-deep water. He then began vomiting up seawater and noticed that Konanki was no longer in sight and assumed she had returned to her hotel room. Riibe said he fell asleep in a beach chair before eventually returning to his room.
Hotel surveillance footage shows Riibe returning to his hotel room around 9 a.m. on March 6.
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Police “clarified that the person of interest is not a suspect,” Subbarayudu told reporters.
“Keep our daughter in your prayers,” he said, adding that he and his wife have other children to care for as they “try to move on” with their lives. He said Sudiksha was “very bright” and “wanted to pursue medicine,” which is why she had enrolled in pre-med at Pitt.
Subbarayudu also said he and his wife believe in the authorities “100%.”
The Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office in Virginia, where Konanki is from, issued a Tuesday statement sharing her family’s belief that she drowned.
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“While a final decision to make such a declaration rests with authorities in the Dominican Republic, we will support the Konanki family in every way possible as we continue to review the evidence and information made available to us in the course of this investigation,” the sheriff’s office said.
Ribbe, who is believed to be one of the last people seen with Konanki, had a hearing Tuesday concerning his writ of habeas corpus, or his challenge to the Dominican Republic’s decision to confiscate his passport and hold him in the country since March 6.
A judge ultimately agreed with Riibe that he had been unlawfully detained, and he has another hearing scheduled for March 28. It was not immediately clear when he might be able to leave the Dominican Republic.
Riibe, a senior at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota who has not been accused of a crime but is considered a crucial witness in the case, had been held under surveillance at the resort since Konanki was reported missing.
His family has called his continued required presence in the country “irregular.”
Fox News’ Michael Ruiz, Mara Robles and Nate Foy contributed to this report.