Josh Riibe is free to leave the DR after being held in Sudiksha Konanki disappearance, judge rules
The last person to see missing University of Pittsburgh student Sudiksha Konanki alive is now free to return home, a judge in the Dominican Republic ruled Tuesday.“Joshua Riibe is free to leave,” the judge declared following a hearing that lasted nearly five hours in the Caribbean nation.Riibe, 22, dressed in black and looking disheveled, was mobbed by TV cameras as he appeared for the court hearing on his bid to be released to return home after being identified as a person of interest in the March 6 disappearance of 20-year-old coed Sudiksha Konaki.“I really want to be able to go home, talk to my family, give them hugs, tell them I miss them,” Ribbe told Judge Elvis Delgado during the heated closed-door hearing, according to Noticias SIN.“I understand I’m here to help, but it’s been 10 days and I can’t leave.”Ribbe has not been charged with wrongdoing and has not been identified as a suspect in Konanki’s disappearance, but remained on the island after his passport was seized.He said he was a virtual prisoner at the RIU Hotel & Resort, with his phone confiscated and police escorting him whenever he left the room — even sitting down to meals with him.The ruling to release him came after Konanki’s parents said they now believe that she drowned in the rough surf off Punta Cana and that Ribbe wasn’t involved in her death.“Both sides of the authorities have shown us how high the ocean waves were at the time of the incident, and both sides of the authorities have clarified the person of interest was not a suspect from the beginning,” her father Subbarayudu told The Post.
“It is with deep sadness and a heavy heart that we are coming to terms with the fact our daughter has drowned.”The ruling to release Riibe came after lawyers for both sides sparred bitterly over the circumstances of Ribbe’s extended presence in the Dominican Republic, with lawyers for the government now saying he was never a suspect, but a witness in the mysterious...