STUDENT Riley Strain’s family still has questions about his death after his body was found in a river last month – and they’re growing frustrated with the ongoing investigation.
Strain, 22, was last seen on March 8 leaving Luke Bryan’s bar Luke 32 Bridge in Nashville, Tennessee, after being asked to leave.
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Surveillance footage captured Riley leaving the bar as he made his way through the downtown area, however, the last known video of him was around 9:55 pm as he was spotted walking under the James Robertson Parkway bridge.
The next day, Strain was reported missing by his friend and his family immediately drove down to Nashville from Springfield, Missouri, after hearing the news.
“There’s a hole in my heart. There always will be,” Strain’s mother, Michelle Whiteid told NewsNation.
“And we may never know what happened that night and that makes it even worse for me.”
READ MORE ON RILEY STRAIN
On March 22, Strain’s body was found in the Cumberland River and an initial autopsy reported that his death appeared “accidental,” however, the medical examiner also stated that Strain didn’t have any water in his lungs, leaving his family to question the circumstances of his death.
“If he fell and truly fell in the water, and you can prove that to some, show me. I’ll accept it,” said Strain’s stepfather, Chris Whiteid.
“But I can tell you from all the stuff that we’ve done, as far as searching, looking, taking pictures, I don’t feel like it’s really possible to happen.
“He may have fallen [or] someone helped him in the water.”
The family said they wouldn’t stop doing interviews or talking with people until they found an answer they were satisfied with.
“It’s still a mission. You know, the objective is still the same, to find out what really happened, because everything we’re seeing it’s, it doesn’t add up,” said Chris.
“It’s not one plus one equals two. You know if it was, we wouldn’t be sitting here.”
MILLION DOLLAR QUESTION
Michelle said she was surprised to learn that her son’s Delta Chia fraternity brothers hadn’t reached out to police by the time they told her Strain was missing.
“Why wouldn’t they have called the police when they got back at 3:15 in the morning and didn’t see him then?” she asked.
“Why wouldn’t they have called the police? I don’t know.”
Riley Strain’s disappearance
Riley Strain, 22, was a senior majoring in finance from the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri.
- Strain was visiting the Nashville area with a group of his Delta Chia fraternity brothers over spring break.
- On the night of March 8, Strain was at Luke’s 32 Bridge bar in downtown Nashville with a group of friends when he was kicked out of the establishment.
- Strain told his friends that he was going to go back to his hotel but never arrived, and his peers were unable to reach him.
- On March 9, Strain’s friends filed a missing persons report with Metro Nashville police.
- On March 17, a pair of TikTokers searching the Cumberland River area uncovered Strain’s bank card.
- That same day, a homeless man spoke to a local news outlet and said he saw Riley Strain ‘heavily intoxicated’ on the night he went missing.
- On March 22, Metro Nashville Police confirmed that Strain’s body was pulled from the Cumberland River, about 8 miles from downtown Nashville.
During their drive to Nashville, Chris explained that the family had called the frat brothers, who said they were just going to the sheriff’s office to report Strain missing.
By that time, Chris said it was closer to noon and Strain wasn’t reported missing until about 12:15 to 12:30 pm.
When asked if the fraternity members might have been too scared to report Strain missing, Chris called it “the million-dollar question.”
The family also revealed that at some point after Strain was reported missing, his fraternity brothers had “all of a sudden disappeared” and returned a few hours later to attend the fraternity’s annual formal that night.
There’s a hole in my heart. There always will be.
Michelle Whiteid
“We spent the next four and a half hours searching every emergency room to see if he was in the hospital,” said Chris.
“We come back and [the fraternity brothers] are coming back, some of them from the party, and they’re waving at us as we’re sitting in the truck. How’s that make you feel?”
He added that there were about 160 fraternity brothers from different chapters who told the family that they could call on them for help if need be.
“We didn’t know what we needed at that point in time,” said Chris. “But you would have thought they would have at least been out searching.”
Strain’s father, Ryan Gilbert, called the fraternity’s actions “appalling.”
‘SOMETHING GOING ON’
While Strain was out at the bar, he told his mother that the rum and coke he was drinking “didn’t take [sic] good.”
“And I said, ‘Well, you probably shouldn’t drink it then,'” Michelle said, adding that Strain said his drink tasted “like barbecue.”
This has led the family to speculate something might have been in Strain’s drink that shouldn’t have been.
The family said Uber drivers and other people from Nashville have told them stories of people being roofied at bars in the downtown area.
“There’s something going on in that town,” said Michelle.
Despite the initial reports of Strain’s death in his autopsy, the medical examiner’s office has yet to release details regarding their findings of the toxicology report.
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