(NewsNation) — Chris Dingman, a friend of Riley Strain’s family, says the last known person to speak with the late University of Missouri student gave the family and later detectives a statement about what happened the night Strain disappeared.
“That was huge. That was something we were looking for,” Dingman said Tuesday on NewsNation’s “Elizabeth Vargas Reports.” “He told the detective his account of the story of what happened to Riley.”
Strain, 22, went missing on March 8 after being ejected from the Luke’s 32 Bridge bar in downtown Nashville, Tennessee. His body was discovered two weeks later in the Cumberland River after an expansive search.
On March 23, Nashville police confirmed to local NewsNation affiliate WKRN that Strain’s preliminary autopsy had been completed and his death appeared to be an accident pending toxicology reports, with “no foul play-related trauma” present.
Strain’s family, however, ordered a second autopsy and is continuing to look for other evidence that may shed light on what happened to him. In addition to the witness’ statement, another potential source of new information is video footage from a detention center near where Strain was last seen.
While video from one camera at the center has been made public, the center has several other cameras, and those recordings have not been available to the family.
“We would love to see the footage,” Dingman said, noting it was currently in the possession of the local sheriff’s department. “We now do have confirmation that there were cameras pointing back toward the bridge where Riley went missing at.”
When NewsNation’s Elizabeth Vargas asked Dingman if the family was still searching for evidence because it thought Strain did not just fall into the Cumberland River and that something else happened, Dingman confirmed that is indeed what the family believes.
“Correct,” he said. “One hundred percent.”
Strain’s family continues to look for answers and for some people, such as the fraternity brothers who were with Strain the night he vanished, to step up in the aftermath.
“We haven’t really heard much from them,” Strain’s father, Ryan Gilbert, told Vargas last week. “There’s a lot of things we’d like to find out from them.
“If I was in their situation, I’d be beating down those parents’ doors to tell them everything I could and be helpful in any way that I could.”