The parents of Sudiksha Konanki, the 20-year-old University of Pittsburgh student who vanished while on a spring break trip in the Dominican Republic, have asked authorities to declare her dead after a nearly two-week search, according to police.
The Dominican Republic National Police told NBC News that Konanki’s parents sent a letter received on March 17 asking that it officially declare her dead, less than two weeks after Konanki was last seen on a beach in Punta Cana.
The Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office in Virginia confirmed it had also received a letter requesting a death declaration for Konanki, according to a spokesperson.
Konanki’s family resides in Loudoun County, and detectives from the sheriff’s office are assisting local investigators in the Dominican Republic, though the office has no jurisdiction in the case.
The Konanki family did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News.
Despite an extensive search, no body has been recovered as of Tuesday morning, the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office said.
Konanki was last seen on surveillance footage in the early morning hours on March 6, walking with a group of people toward the beach area of the RIU Republic Resort in Punta Cana.
Joshua Riibe, a man she was walking with in the video, is believed to be the last person to have seen her alive.
Riibe’s legal defense team filed a habeas corpus petition on March 17 and is expected in court at 2 p.m. on March 18, a source within the Dominican Republic Attorney General’s Office told NBC News.
A habeas corpus petition is generally used as a request for someone to be released from detention. Riibe’s legal team did not respond to a request for comment from NBC News.
No one has been identified as a suspect in the case, according to Dominican authorities.
Riibe’s attorneys have said his passport has been confiscated and that police follow him “anywhere he goes.”
The U.S. State Department declined to comment on Riibe’s status on March 17.
On March 16, he walked with investigators on the beach where Konanki was last seen.
Hours before the walk, Riibe exclusively told NBC News, “I’m just trying to help them out.”
“The ocean is a dangerous place,” he added.
Riibe, 22, told local authorities that he had rescued Konanki from drowning before she went missing in Punta Cana, according to a transcript of a March 12 interview obtained by NBC News.
Riibe said he and Konanki were on the beach together before she disappeared after 4:15 a.m. on March 6. He said that while they were at the beach, the two were “in waist-deep water, talking and kissing a little,” when a wave crashed into them and took them “out to sea.”
“I kept trying to get her to breathe, but that didn’t allow me to breathe all the time, and I swallowed a lot of water,” he said.
He said he was able to get both of them back closer to the shore, still in knee-deep water.
“I asked if she was OK. I didn’t hear her answer because I started vomiting all the seawater I’d swallowed,” he said. “After vomiting, I looked around and didn’t see anyone. I thought she’d grabbed her things and left.”
Konanki, a junior at the University of Pittsburgh, arrived in the Dominican Republic on March 3 with a group of five female friends from her college. She was reported missing on March 6 when her friends came home from an excursion and realized she had vanished.
Carlos Catire
