Rylie Strain Heartbreaking Updates And Latest News
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- Missing 22-year-old Riley Strain's body has been found. And if you don't know this case, I'm going to catch you up right now. - Riley Strain's body found this morning in a Nashville river.

So in early March, 22 year old Riley Strain went to Nashville with some of his frat brothers. Riley was actually senior at the University of Missouri and a member of the Delta Chi fraternity. They were hitting Nashville because Delta Chi was hosting a formal there over the weekend.

and they made the most of their trip. The night of Friday, March 8th, they bar hopped through the city and Riley took lots of pictures at each stop. He sent them to his mother so she could see how his night was going. He and his brothers stopped by at least two other bars before they ended up at a joint called Luke's 32 Bridge. It was named after a musician, Luke Bryan, who also owned the bar.

This was a spacious multi-story venue with a stage and an outdoor patio. It was a good place to spend the evening and Riley and his Delta Chi brothers got there pretty early. But Riley only went up to the bar three times at that stop. Once he ordered a hard drink and the other two times he asked for water.

Now Riley had been drinking before he got to the bar, so it's not like he was totally sober. But from the sound of it, he may not have been that drunk either. In addition to those pictures he'd been texting to his parents, Riley had also been FaceTiming with his stepfather. They spoke multiple times over the course of that evening in Nashville and Riley's stepdad thought he seemed relatively sober, like he hadn't been hitting the alcohol that hard.

Now it's tough to say how accurate that was because at 9:35 PM, Riley was kicked out of Luke's 32 Bridge into the darkness of Nashville. A bar can be liable for over serving someone who is visibly intoxicated. In the case of Riley Strain, it's hard to say what kind of liability is on the line until police can say what happened to him. They also said Riley didn't get into any physical fights or cause a disturbance.

Reading between the lines, it sounds like they cut him off because Riley was clearly inebriated. Now a security camera recorded him walking out of the bar right afterward. There were a few people with him. The bar's security personnel were there to make sure he actually left.

and one of Riley's frat brothers walked out with him too. But once the brother confirmed that Riley was okay on the street, he actually turned around and walked back inside. So basically Riley had to get himself home on his own while the rest of his friends kept the party going.

No one was with him, so everything we know about what happened to Riley for the rest of the night comes from security cameras and other footage. One clip showed him walking directly across the street from Luke's 32 to another bar. He tried to get in, but the bouncer wouldn't let him. You can't really tell what they said from the footage, but it's reasonable to assume that if Riley really was drunk enough to get kicked out of the last bar, this new one probably didn't want to deal with him either.

After he was told not to come in, Riley turned and walked away, but he actually went in the wrong direction. He was headed away from the hotel where he and his brothers were staying.

We know that 11 minutes after he left Luke's 32, so at 9.46 p.m., Riley was still strolling alone down the street. Now, Riley must have been going pretty fast or maybe even jogging because the specific street he was on was about a 15-minute walk from the bar, meaning it took him 11 minutes to get about 15 minutes.

It's not a huge disparity and some people are naturally fast walkers. So it's not like this is especially difficult to explain, but Riley didn't seem like he was in a physical state to be power walking. The footage actually showed him lose his balance and fall multiple times, which again does make it sound like he was pretty drunk by this point, or at least under the influence of something.

One minute later, he crossed the street and appeared on another surveillance camera. He was looking at his phone and seemed confused. He walked one way for a while, then turned around and went back the other way. Like maybe he was trying to follow GPS directions back to his hotel. Right after that clip, Riley walked past a police officer who captured him on his body cam. - How you doing, sir? - I'm good, how are you? - Good.

Then at 9.52 p.m., he was recorded for the last time on Nashville's Gay Street, which runs along the Cumberland River. Now, in some of those clips, Riley bumped into buildings. And at one point, he walked into a pole hard enough to hit his head on it. So we know he was stumbling around for about 17 minutes in the dark alone in a city that he does not live in.

He seemed potentially lost or confused, and we don't know exactly what happened afterward. There are reports that at some point Riley was spotted near a homeless encampment. I don't know what time it was or how the incident fit in with all of that security camera footage,

but the encampment wasn't too far from Gay Street or the river, so it must have been around 10:00 PM or later. Apparently Riley was falling down drunk at this point and making a lot of noise. He woke up the people who were sleeping in their tents.

The mother reached out, she saw Riley, she made a comment of like, "You're not driving tonight?" And he goes, "No, ma'am." One man was shocked at how intoxicated Riley seemed to be. He'd never seen anyone that bad before. But once everyone determined that Riley was just some tourist and not a real threat, they ignored him until he left. It didn't occur to anyone that Riley might be in trouble or that he might be declared missing by early that morning.

So that happened four hours after Riley was kicked out of Luke's 32 Bridge. Apparently, his frat brother spent several hours trying to find him before they got the police involved. One of Riley's friends actually got creative with social media. He looked Riley up on Snapchat since it can show a user's location

but for whatever reason it didn't work they couldn't find their friend they also tried calling and texting him but he never picked up or replied we know riley's phone was on and that it had enough battery power to stay on through the night and riley was texting one person during the evening a young woman who was apparently in a situation ship with riley

Based on the news reports, it sounds like they weren't dating, but they weren't exactly not dating either. At one point, the woman texted Riley to ask how his night was going, and he replied, good lops. Good lops. Like L-O-P-S. Lops. Lops.

The woman didn't even know what that meant and she even googled the term to see if it was some slang she wasn't aware of. Frankly, it sounds like no one knows what that means. Maybe Riley was trying to type something else, but he was too drunk to get the right words out. Either way, the woman didn't follow up on the conversation. No one knew that they should even worry until around 1:35 a.m., which was when his friends finally reported him missing.

Ongoing search efforts for missing college student Riley Strain. Right away, the police notified Riley's family members who flew out to Nashville to help with the search effort and volunteers papered the city streets with missing persons flyers. They begged the public to report anything they'd seen or heard. And on Tuesdays, parents held a press conference asking the public for help. Especially as days went by without any new breaks.

Helicopters surveyed the city from above and sonar technicians checked to see if his remains were under the ground or water. - At sundown, the United Cajun Navy heads out to search the Cumberland River for Riley's strain again, tonight using sonar equipment. - They actually focused on the area around the Cumberland River,

Riley's family also asked the United Cajun Navy to get involved and help. This was a group that formed after Hurricane Katrina, then traveled the country helping in all kinds of search and rescue efforts. But more than a week went by without any new leads. And then finally, a tip came in on March 18th. It was from a pair of women who'd seen Riley's story on TV. Afterward, they spent their days walking along the riverbanks, hoping they'd find something the search teams had missed.

And on that Monday, they did. They spotted Riley's debit card. At the time, they were actually live streaming their search on TikTok. As soon as they realized they'd found real evidence, the women signed off social media so they could call the police.

But enough people had been watching the stream that the news got back to Riley's family right away. They were grateful for the new information, but they recognized that the discovery was bad news. Between the report from the unhoused people in the camp, the security footage, and now this discovery, it was

it was looking more and more likely that something might have happened to Riley at the Cumberland River. Maybe when he was drunk, he fell in and drowned. After all, it had been 10 days since his disappearance with no word from him. But on top of that, Riley's parents were really frustrated with the finding. Search teams had already scoured that area multiple times and no one had spotted the card during any of those surveys.

It sounded a little like they weren't being detail-oriented enough and maybe they'd missed some other key clues that pointed at Riley's whereabouts. This wasn't the first time that a new discovery suggested someone was dropping the ball. See, on that same day, the 18th, Nashville authorities released body cam footage and it did show Riley interacting with a police officer at approximately 10:00 PM the night he went missing. I did mention this briefly before, the police officer was one of the last people who ever saw Riley.

And this clip was the second to last recording that was ever made of him alive. It helped show his state of mind while he made his way down Gay Street. The body cam showed Riley walking pretty steady on his feet and apparently not as drunk as in the other footage.

The officer asked Riley how he was doing and Riley replied, "I'm good, how are you?" So it sounds like he wasn't afraid for his life or even too concerned about the fact that he'd been wandering around aimlessly for almost 20 minutes. However, the clip raised some questions. Like how was this sober seeming young man, the same person who was falling down drunk just one minute later in another video? Plus Riley's parents didn't understand why it took 10 days for the body cam footage to come out.

They told reporters that they were frustrated because it felt like they were being kept out of the loop. That said, they were also grateful for everyone who'd helped look for Riley. It was hard to stay optimistic as each day went by, but they were still hopeful that Riley would be found safe and sound. And all of Riley's family's hopes that he would be found safe and sound were dashed on the morning of Friday, March 22nd, 2024.

It had been two weeks since Riley was last seen alive, and search teams found his body in the river about eight miles from downtown. There were no signs of foul play, and the police said they thought he must have just fallen in the water while he was drunk. Then he drowned.

It's devastating that Riley's story came to such a tragic end. When I read this in the news, it left me so heartbroken. But there's one silver lining that came out of this. The mayor of Nashville announced that he was looking to find ways to make the sidewalk along the river safer. Regardless of how you may feel about binge drinking, it shouldn't come with a death sentence. And now that Riley's disappearance and death brought so much attention to the risks the Cumberland River poses,

it may save others from meeting the same fate. We don't know if Riley was drugged. His parents have maybe assumed that that might be. I hope we get more answers in the future, but I'm so sad that this is how this case is ending.