American college student missing in Dominican Republic didn’t drown, Natalee Holloway private eye believes

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Virginia college student missing in Dominican Republic

Officials believe 20-year-old Sudiksha Konanki drowned while on spring break in the Dominican Republic. Fox News’ Todd Piro reports the latest on the search. 

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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.”

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Sudiksha Konanki in a Facebook selfie photo. The 20-year-old University of Pittsburgh junior has been missing since March 6, when she vanished during a spring break trip to a five-star resort in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. (Sudiksha Konanki/Facebook)

Her whereabouts remain unknown, but ABC News reported Monday that she may have drowned, citing law enforcement sources.

Ward rejected that theory, and Dominican police have said they are investigating one of Konanki’s friends and looking to corroborate claims from a “young man” who was also in the water that night. They have questioned multiple witnesses, including her friends.

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“If she had gone into the water, she would’ve washed up somewhere with a tide the way that comes into the island,” Ward said.

Authorities have searched by land, air and sea, and he said a body in the water would likely have been discovered unless someone took her far offshore.

Konanki’s family is also skeptical of reports she may have drowned, according to WTOP News, a Washington-based outlet.

“It’s four days, and if she was in water, she would likely have been strewn to shore,” her father, Subbarayudu Konanki, told the outlet. “She’s not found, so we’re asking them to investigate multiple options, like kidnapping or abduction.”

Sudiksha Konanki appears in an undated photo on her TikTok profile. She was last seen on March 6 at a resort beach in Punta Cana. (@sudikshakonanki/TikTok)

In a complaint filed with Dominican authorities asking them to investigate a potential drowning as well as the possibility of kidnapping or foul play, the elder Konanki said his daughter’s phone and wallet were left with her friends, which he said was “unusual,” according to the outlet. 

Attempts to reach him from Fox News Digital were unsuccessful Monday. 

Konanki was on a spring break trip to the Dominican Republic with five female classmates, authorities said previously.

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She arrived on March 3 and was last seen around 4:15 a.m. on March 6, on surveillance video, headed onto the beach with her friends, according to local police. 

Konanki’s disappearance does share some similarities with Holloway’s. Both young women traveled to a Caribbean beach resort with classmates. Both vanished on the beach at night, staying out late after their friends went back to their respective hotels. Holloway’s case came to a gruesome conclusion last year after a suspect, Joran van der Sloot, confessed to killing her nearly two decades after the fact.  

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Joran van der Sloot was the prime suspect in the 2005 disappearance of Natalee Holloway for nearly two decades. He finally admitted to killing her after facing federal charges of trying to exort her mother while serving a prison sentence in Peru for murdering another young woman, 21-year-old Stephany Flores, in 2010.  (Getty Images, AP)

“They don’t understand travel in these other countries,” Ward said of American students who may be attracted to the idea of going somewhere they can legally drink under the age of 21. 

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“There’s problems there with assaults, kidnappings and so on and so forth,” he told Fox News Digital. “Young people just don’t understand the theory about what’s going on in these other countries, and they think they can go away because they can drink and party and at a younger age and get away with it and do things that they couldn’t do here in the U.S.”

There are “major problems” in the Dominican Republic and other Caribbean nations, he said.

In 2019, at least 11 Americans died and thousands more suffered food poisoning in the country, according to Berkshire Hathaway Travel Protection. That same year, Boston Red Sox legend David Ortiz survived a nightclub shooting there.

“There’s bad people out in the middle of the night, and I don’t know why she was out at 4:30 in the morning, or where her friends were, but you can’t be by yourself like that, walking in a country that you know nothing about,” Ward said. “You need to stay in groups and where you’re not going to be a target.”

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“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.”

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Fox News’ Greg Norman and Michael Dorgan contributed to this report.