Witness says missing Pitt student rescued from powerful wave — then vanished

A man who might’ve been the last person to see Sudiksha Konanki, a University of Pittsburgh student who went missing last week while on spring break in the Dominican Republic, said he rescued her from drowning — only for her to vanish a short time later, according to a transcript of an interview he gave with local authorities that NBC News obtained.

Konanki, a 20-year-old junior, went to Punta Cana on March 3 with five female friends for a spring break trip. She was last seen early March 6 at around 4:15 a.m. after going to the beach with friends.

The man, who officials in Konanki’s home state of Virginia called as a “person of interest,” told local investigators that he and Konanki were on the beach “in waist-deep water, talking and kissing a little,” according to an interview transcript.

That’s when a wave crashed and swept them both “out to sea,” the man said in the March 12 interview.

“I kept trying to get her to breathe, but that didn’t allow me to breathe all the time, and I swallowed a lot of water,” he recalled.

The man told investigators he previously worked as a lifeguard and managed to get himself and Konanki back to shore before she went missing.

“The last time I saw her, I asked if she was okay. I didn’t hear her answer,” he recalled. “I looked around and didn’t see anyone. I thought she’d grabbed her things and left.” 

He told Dominican authorities he was surprised to later learn Konanki was missing.

Konanki, from the Washington D.C. suburb of Chantilly, Virginia, is a biology student at Pitt and her disappearance has drawn the interest of authorities back home.

The Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office, where Konanki’s family resides, has no jurisdiction over the case but has nonetheless sent detectives to Punta Cana to assist with the U.S. side of the investigation, and has described the man interviewed as a “person of interest.”

A sheriff’s spokesperson told NBC News on Friday that they spoke to the man on Thursday, the day after local authorities interviewed him. They said the man’s father accompanied him during the “extensive interview” and that the man was “cooperative.”

Dominican authorities said Thursday they do not use the term “person of interest” in the case and no one is considered a suspect at this point. U.S. authorities say this is a missing person’s case and not a criminal matter.