{
  "id": "2025-03-06-university-of-pittsburgh-sudiksha-konanki-missing-student",
  "slug": "university-of-pittsburgh-sudiksha-konanki-missing-student-2025-03-06",
  "institution": {
    "name": "University of Pittsburgh",
    "shortName": "Pitt",
    "state": "PA",
    "type": "public-r1",
    "alertSystemName": "Emergency Notification Service (ENS)",
    "enrollment": 34000
  },
  "incident": {
    "date": "2025-03-06",
    "type": "missing-person",
    "cleryCategory": "missing-student",
    "headline": "Missing-student notification for a junior who disappeared on a spring break trip abroad",
    "headlinePublic": "Missing-student notification for a junior who disappeared on a spring break trip abroad",
    "summary": "On March 6, 2025, [University of Pittsburgh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Pittsburgh) junior pre-med biology student [Sudiksha Konanki, 20](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Sudiksha_Konanki), disappeared from the beach at the Riu República Hotel in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, around 4 AM AST while on a spring break trip with friends. After a [multi-day international search](https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/11/us/sudiksha-konanki-missing-what-we-know-hnk/index.html), [Interpol issued a global Yellow Notice around March 12-13](https://www.npr.org/2025/03/12/nx-s1-5325265/sudiksha-konanki-missing-dominican-republic) at the Loudoun County Sheriff's request. Her family requested she be declared legally dead on March 18, 2025; investigators believed she had drowned.",
    "outcome": "Konanki's body was never recovered, and investigators believed she drowned and found no evidence of foul play. Her family requested on March 18, 2025 that she be legally declared deceased, though under Dominican law such a declaration cannot proceed for years, so she has not been legally declared dead. The man last seen with her, Joshua Riibe, 22, a senior at St. Cloud State University from Rock Rapids, Iowa, was questioned and kept under police-controlled surveillance with his passport seized; on March 17, 2025 a Dominican judge granted his habeas corpus motion, finding his restriction had exceeded the 48-hour constitutional maximum, cleared him of any involvement, and he returned to the United States. He was never charged, and surveillance video corroborated his account that a wave swept them out to sea.",
    "resolution": "confirmed-threat",
    "casualties": {
      "killed": 0,
      "injured": 0
    }
  },
  "alerts": [
    {
      "sequence": 1,
      "type": "update",
      "timestampApprox": "March 2025, posted to safety.pitt.edu",
      "channel": "email",
      "verbatimText": "Since Sudiksha Konanki's reported disappearance, the University of Pittsburgh Police Department has been actively working with the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office and the following agencies in their investigation to find and bring her home safely: U.S. State Department, FBI, HSI, DEA, and the local Dominican Republic authorities. Anyone with information is urged to contact the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office at 703-777-1021 and Pitt Police at 412-624-2121. Community care resources are available for the Pitt community seeking support, including LifeSolutions for faculty and staff at 1-866-647-3432 and the University Counseling Center for students at 412-648-7930.",
      "isVerbatimConfirmed": true,
      "sourceUrl": "https://www.safety.pitt.edu/alerts/update-on-sudiksha-konanki-investigation",
      "sourceDescription": "University of Pittsburgh Office of Public Safety & Emergency Management: 'Update on Sudiksha Konanki Investigation'",
      "annotations": [
        "Published on safety.pitt.edu; Interpol issued the Yellow Notice around March 12-13, 2025, at the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office's request; Yellow Notices are global alerts for missing persons, especially for victims of unexplained disappearances",
        "Interpol's Yellow Notice escalation is the international analog to a US Silver/AMBER alert and substantially extends the geographic reach of an HEOA notification",
        "The Yellow Notice's appearance in a Pitt missing-student notification illustrates how HEOA can scale to fully international scope when the disappearance occurs abroad"
      ],
      "characterCount": 670
    }
  ],
  "context": "Sudiksha Konanki, born December 13, 2004, was a 20-year-old [University of Pittsburgh junior majoring in biology on a pre-medical track](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Sudiksha_Konanki), an Indian citizen and US permanent resident living with her family in Chantilly, Virginia. On March 6, 2025, she was on a spring break trip with five female friends at the Riu República Hotel in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. [Surveillance video captured the group heading to the beach at approximately 4:15 AM AST, with Konanki walking arm-in-arm with Joshua Riibe](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sudiksha-konanki-missing-student-punta-cana-dominican-republic-updates/), a 22-year-old American senior at St. Cloud State University from Rock Rapids, Iowa. Most of the group left the beach around 6 AM, leaving Konanki and Riibe behind. Riibe told prosecutors that they had been swept out by a wave; surveillance video later corroborated his account. The University of Pittsburgh announced it was in contact with Konanki's family and authorities in Loudoun County, Virginia, where her family lived. The case rapidly escalated internationally: [Interpol issued a global Yellow Notice around March 12-13, 2025](https://www.npr.org/2025/03/12/nx-s1-5325265/sudiksha-konanki-missing-dominican-republic) at the Loudoun County Sheriff's request, and a Dominican judge later granted a habeas corpus motion that cleared the man last seen with her, who was never charged. On [March 18, 2025, her family asked Dominican authorities to declare her legally deceased](https://www.npr.org/2025/03/19/nx-s1-5332172/missing-student-dominican-republic-sudiksha-konanki), believing she had drowned. The case is exceptional in the [Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_Education_Opportunity_Act) HEOA archive because the missing-student notification involved an international disappearance where the host country had primary investigative authority and Interpol was the most consequential escalation channel, a pattern that will likely become more common as study-abroad and spring-break travel expand.",
  "keyFindings": [
    "Konanki's HEOA missing-student notification involved an international disappearance, testing the framework's reach when the host country has primary investigative authority",
    "Interpol's Yellow Notice global alert is the international analog to US Silver and AMBER alerts and the most consequential escalation channel for the case",
    "Pitt's institutional voice was deliberately quiet because the disappearance was 1,500+ miles from campus and Loudoun County (Virginia, where her family lived) was the procedural lead",
    "The case marks one of the first HEOA-era missing-student notifications to feature both an Interpol Yellow Notice and a family request for legal declaration of death within the same 30-day window"
  ],
  "sources": [
    {
      "title": "Disappearance of Sudiksha Konanki (Wikipedia)",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Sudiksha_Konanki",
      "type": "other"
    },
    {
      "title": "Sudiksha Konanki: What we know about the US college student missing in Dominican Republic (CNN)",
      "url": "https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/11/us/sudiksha-konanki-missing-what-we-know-hnk/index.html",
      "type": "local-media"
    },
    {
      "title": "Interpol issues global alert for Pitt student Sudiksha Konanki (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)",
      "url": "https://www.post-gazette.com/news/world/2025/03/18/missing-university-pittsburgh-student-sudiksha-konanki-punta-cana/stories/202503180044",
      "type": "local-media"
    },
    {
      "title": "What we know about the search for U.S. student missing in the Dominican Republic (NPR)",
      "url": "https://www.npr.org/2025/03/12/nx-s1-5325265/sudiksha-konanki-missing-dominican-republic",
      "type": "local-media"
    },
    {
      "title": "What to know as the search for Sudiksha Konanki, the missing University of Pittsburgh student, continues (NBC News)",
      "url": "https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/sudiksha-konanki-missing-university-pittsburgh-student-what-know-rcna196341",
      "type": "local-media"
    },
    {
      "title": "Family of U.S. student missing in the Dominican Republic believes she drowned (NPR)",
      "url": "https://www.npr.org/2025/03/19/nx-s1-5332172/missing-student-dominican-republic-sudiksha-konanki",
      "type": "local-media"
    },
    {
      "title": "Missing student Sudiksha Konanki vanished in Punta Cana on spring break (CBS News)",
      "url": "https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sudiksha-konanki-missing-student-punta-cana-dominican-republic-updates/",
      "type": "local-media"
    },
    {
      "title": "University of Pittsburgh Office of Public Safety & Emergency Management: 'Update on Sudiksha Konanki Investigation'",
      "url": "https://www.safety.pitt.edu/alerts/update-on-sudiksha-konanki-investigation",
      "type": "official-archive"
    }
  ],
  "confidence": "medium",
  "tags": [
    "missing-student",
    "missing-person",
    "heoa",
    "pennsylvania",
    "public-r1",
    "international",
    "interpol",
    "yellow-notice",
    "spring-break",
    "drowning",
    "dominican-republic"
  ],
  "dateAdded": "2026-05-03",
  "lastUpdated": "2026-07-17",
  "addedBy": "ingestion"
}