A man who could have been the last person to see Sudiksha Konanki, a student at the University of Pittsburgh who disappeared last week while he was on spring vacation in the Dominican Republic, said he rescued her from drowning, just for her to disappear shortly after, according to a transcription of an interview she found with the local authorities that NBC News obtained.
Konanki, a 20 -year -old, went to Punta Cana on March 3 with five friends for a spring vacation trip. He was last seen at the beginning of March 6 around 4:15 am after going to the beach with friends.
The man, who would work in the native state of Konanki in Virginia, called as “person of interest,” he told local researchers that he and Konanki were on the beach “in deep waters of the waist, speaking and kissing a little,” according to a transcription of the interview.
It was then that a wave crashed and swept them both “outside the sea,” said the man in the interview of March 12.
“I kept trying to make it breathe, but that did not allow me to breathe all the time, and swallowed a lot of water,” he recalled.
The man told the researchers that he previously worked as lifeguard and managed to recover himself and Konanki back to the coast before disappearing.
“The last time I saw her, I asked if I was fine. I didn’t hear your answer,” he recalled. “I looked around and I didn’t see anyone. I thought she had grabbed him and left.”
He told the Dominican authorities that he was surprised to discover later that Konanki was missing.
Konanki, from the Washington DC suburb of Chantilly, Virginia, is a Biology student in Pitt and his disappearance has attracted the interest of the authorities at home.
The Sheriff’s Office of the Loudoun County, where Konanki’s family resides, has no jurisdiction on the case, but nevertheless has sent detectives to Punta Cana to help with the American side of the investigation, and has described the man interviewed as a “person of interest.”
A Sheriff spokesman told NBC News on Friday that they talked to the man on Thursday, the day after local authorities interviewed him. They said that the father of man accompanied him during the “extensive interview” and that the man was “cooperative.”
The Dominican authorities said Thursday that they do not use the term “person of interest” in the case and that no one is considered suspicious at this time. US authorities say that this is the case of a missing person and not a criminal issue.
Michael Kosnar contributed.
