Umair
The man last seen with Sudiksha Konanki, a college student who went missing this month while on spring break in the Dominican Republic, has left that country after he was repeatedly questioned about her disappearance, his lawyer said.
Joshua Steven Riibe, 22, flew back to the United States on Wednesday night with his father, according to Guzmán Ariza, the law firm representing him.
Ms. Konanki, 20, went missing on March 6 during a spring break trip to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. This week, her parents said they believed that she had drowned.
Mr. Riibe was never considered a suspect, according to the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office in Virginia, which helped investigate Ms. Konanki’s disappearance. He is a senior at St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, Minn., and is from Rock Rapids, Iowa.
In a court hearing in Higüey, Dominican Republic, on Tuesday, Mr. Riibe said that he had been held in the country for 10 days, El Caribe, a local newspaper, reported. Mr. Riibe said that he wanted to go home and to see his family.
ABC News reported that the Dominican authorities had confiscated his passport. Guzmán Ariza said in a statement that Mr. Riibe applied for a new passport at the United States Consulate and that one was promptly issued.
A State Department spokesperson said in an email that Mr. Riibe had left the Dominican Republic.
Officials in the Dominican Republic said that Ms. Konanki, a University of Pittsburgh student from Loudoun County, arrived in the Dominican Republic on March 3 and stayed at the Hotel Riu Republica in Punta Cana with five friends.
She was seen with a man, now known to be Mr. Riibe, in the early hours of March 6 near a beach in Punta Cana, the officials said.
Thomas A. Julia, a spokesman for the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office, told The New York Times on Wednesday that two Loudoun County detectives had interviewed Mr. Riibe in the Dominican Republic on March 13 and that “we believe he was fully cooperative.”
“From what we can tell,” Mr. Julia said, “he tried to get her out of the water.”
Ms. Konanki’s father told reporters on Tuesday that he and her mother believed that their daughter, a pre-med student, had drowned, NBC4 Washington reported. He said they did not believe Mr. Riibe had done anything wrong.
The authorities in the Dominican Republic said that after they were alerted to Ms. Konanki’s disappearance, they performed an “exhaustive” search of the beach and the surrounding area, using drones, helicopters, divers, boats, police dogs and other resources.
