Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic – The American, who was believed to have disappeared from University of Pittsburgh student Sudiksha Conanki, returned to the US on Wednesday, about two weeks later, he said.
NBC news revealed that Josh Arivee occurred at Las Americas International Airport in the country’s capital, Santo Domingo, where he boarded a plane and took off on Wednesday evening. NBC News first reported that he has returned to US soil.
He was with the man Libe’s lawyer identified as his father. They were accompanied by a woman in the check-in area, which was delayed when they went through security screening.
On NBC News, airport employees were helping board.
Riibe’s departure ends what his lawyers claim is a few days of detention in the Dominican Republic as his lawyers questioned him in connection with the loss of Conanki on March 6th.
According to Riibe and his lawyers, the 22-year-old Riibe is under police supervision at the hotel where he was staying on his spring break trip when Conanki disappeared. Local authorities also confiscated Libe’s passport, they said.
Libe, a senior at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, has not been charged with the crime, and the suspect in the loss of Conanki has not been named, according to the Dominican Republic National Police.
A Dominican judge ruled on Tuesday that he no longer needed to be monitored by police.
Libe would have had to go to the US embassy in Santo Domingo and obtain an emergency US passport within the country.
“The US Embassy is in touch with him, his family and his lawyers, and we are also providing consul support,” State Department spokesman Tammy Bruce said at a briefing Wednesday before Libe’s departure.
One Riibe’s lawyer said Wednesday evening that the prosecutor’s office at La Altagracia told Riibe after Tuesday’s hearing that he was ready to return his passport on Wednesday. However, Riibe has decided to apply for something new through the US government for “privacy reasons.”
The new passport was “urgently issued,” the lawyer said.
Prosecutors said in the public court on Tuesday that they didn’t know where the Riibe passport was.
The National Police did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Libe’s departure. The country’s attorney general did not immediately respond to requests for information regarding his passport.
Conanki’s Lost Disappear has been attracting widespread attention over the past few weeks.
Conanki, a junior at the University of Pittsburgh, was on spring break with five friends at a beach resort in Punta Cana when she disappeared on early March 6th.
The Ribe, a native of Rock Rapids, Iowa, told a local investigator in an interview last week that he was on the beach with Conanki, according to an interview transcript obtained by NBC News.
According to the transcript, Libe and Conanki said “in the deep waters of their waists, talking a little and kissing,” and waves crashed, and both “go out into the sea.”
Police say they have not found no signs of violence on the beach. A spokesperson for the hotel where Conanki was staying said that a red flag also flew in the morning when she disappeared, indicating that “there was a strong current and very high waves in the sea.”
Conanki’s parents told reporters outside their home in Loudon County, Virginia that they had given up hope that their daughter was still alive.
“We agree with the fact that our daughter is owned,” her father, Sabu Belayudu Conanki, shed tears. “This is very difficult for us to handle.”
Her parents asked local police to declare their daughter dead earlier in the week. Her father added Tuesday that they began to reason that their daughter owned based on information we and local authorities gave them.
“Both sides of the authorities (indicating how high the ocean waves were at the time of the incident,” he said. “And both sides of the authorities have made it clear that anyone interested would not doubt from the start.”
Alexandra Bacalao contributed.
