A 20-year-old University of Pittsburgh student who vanished from a five-star resort in the Dominican Republic likely didn’t drown on the beach as some reports have suggested, according to the private investigator who went to Aruba following the disappearance of Natalee Holloway under similar circumstances in 2005.
Sudiksha Konanki, who was born in India but is a legal permanent U.S. resident from Virginia, was last seen entering the beach early Thursday morning at the Riu Republica Resort in Punta Cana, according to La Policia Nacional, the country’s national police force. She was with a friend who is currently under investigation, according to a translation of a Spanish-language statement.
“I don’t think that she drowned in the ocean,” said TJ Ward, the private investigator who worked for Holloway’s parents after she vanished on a trip she went on with high school classmates to celebrate graduation. “I totally believe that somebody knows something where she is, or somebody took her away, or somebody’s holding her somewhere.”
“So they need to understand that there’s major problems with people here going to those countries on say, the spring break, because they feel they have the resources and be able to have the luxury and be able to do what they want to do without being looked at,” he added. “And people there are taking advantage of girls, and there’s bad people on these islands, and they need to be looked at, and law enforcement knows it.”
Punta Cana on a map. (Google Maps)
Police have questioned multiple witnesses, including her friends and an unnamed “young man” whose story they said they were looking to corroborate.
Konanki is originally from India but is a legal permanent U.S. resident from Loudoun County, near Washington, D.C., according to authorities. She is 5 feet, 3 inches tall, with black hair and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing a brown bikini, hoop earrings, bracelets and an anklet.
A spokesperson for the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office also told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that the report that Konanki drowned may be “based on her last known location near the beach, but [there’s] no evidence to support that conclusion at this time.”
Fox News’ Greg Norman and Michael Dorgan contributed to this report.
