NASHVILLE — As the baffling search for Riley Strain, the 22-year-old University of Missouri student who disappeared under mysterious circumstances in Nashville over a week ago, enters its 12th day, new details have emerged about his final communications and the increasing exasperation felt by his relatives over the handling of the investigation.
According to a family friend, Mr. Strain’s last known text message before vanishing was an enigmatic two-word phrase – “Good lops” – sent to a woman he was seeing at the time. The woman apparently struggled to decipher the puzzling message’s meaning and even consulted the internet for potential explanations.
The revelation of this cryptic final text, shared by the friend during an interview with NewsNation on Monday, adds another layer of bewilderment to the already perplexing disappearance of Mr. Strain on the night of March 8th.
That evening, the Delta Chi fraternity member was captured on surveillance footage looking unsteady on his feet in downtown Nashville, just moments after being asked to leave the popular Luke Bryan’s bar and seemingly ignored by a police officer who briefly encountered him. His debit card was later discovered by civilians near the Cumberland River over a week later, in an area that had previously been scoured by search teams.
As the strands of the case grow more tangled with each passing day, Mr. Strain’s parents and other loved ones are becoming increasingly dismayed by the lack of urgency and transparency they feel is being demonstrated by the various agencies involved in the search.
“We were getting frustrated, we wanted to see what they had,” Chris Whiteid, Mr. Strain’s stepfather, lamented to NewsNation regarding delays in obtaining footage from law enforcement. “We’re 10 days in, you know? It’s disheartening.”
The family’s friend, Chris Dingman, echoed those sentiments of vexation, saying they have “heard multiple people that have tried to call crime-stoppers and leave tips and been told they don’t know anything about a Riley Strain case. So, lots of confusion. We’re struggling.”
In a heart-wrenching interview with PEOPLE magazine last week, Mrs. Whiteid, Riley’s mother, was adamant about her refusal to leave Nashville until her son is found. “We’re not leaving,” she declared. “We know you’re out there.”
The anguish of Mr. Strain’s relatives has only been compounded by the apparent lack of coordination between agencies. While Nashville police have been leading the investigation into his disappearance, the Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission has launched a separate probe into whether the young student was overserved at Luke Bryan’s establishment before his vanishing.
In a statement last week, the TC Restaurant Group, which oversees the bar, claimed their records indicate Mr. Strain “purchased and was served one alcoholic drink and two waters” during his time there. However, body camera footage showed him stumbling and struggling to maintain his balance in the area shortly after his ejection from the premises.
As the two-week mark approaches with no major breakthroughs, the Strain family’s pleas for answers and accountability amid the tangled threads of the case continue to grow more agonized by the day.
“It’s killing us,” Michelle Whiteid told PEOPLE in an earlier interview as the desperate search for her son stretched into its first agonizing week without any substantive leads.
The Strains’ ordeal has reverberated through the local Nashville community, with loved ones and strangers alike preparing search efforts and candlelight vigils imploring the young man’s safe return as the mystery surrounding his final whereabouts and communications deepens.
For the parents, as well as Mr. Strain’s Delta Chi fraternity brothers who have joined the search efforts, the torture of not knowing his fate after that fateful “Good lops” text is becoming ever more excruciating as their frustrations toward the investigation intensify.
“We’re looking for you,” Chris Whiteid pleaded through tears last week, his voice joining the growing chorus begging for answers in this darkening clouds of bewilderment enveloping Mr. Strain’s baffling disappearance.
