In a serpentine case rife with dizzying contradictions, the strange circumstances surrounding the demise of University of Missouri senior Riley Strain have his anguished family roiling with skepticism toward the official narrative. The 22-year-old’s corpse materialized in Tennessee’s meandering Cumberland River during a frat trip sojourn to Nashville’s neon-drenched Broadway nightlife strip. But medical reports have catalyzed vexing dissonances that simply don’t comport with a cut-and-dry accidental drowning, the clan insists.
“Prove to me he just tumbled into that water,” Riley’s stepfather Chris Whiteid fired back with flinty defiance when apprised of law enforcement’s preliminary conclusions. “The evidence trail we’ve amassed screams something’s amiss here. Maybe he did fall, but I’m convinced somebody assisted getting him submerged.”
At the crux of the family’s bristling skepticism is the chilling disclosure that the autopsy shockingly detected not a drop of water in Strain’s lungs. His body also bore no outward signs of trauma – no lacerations, contusions or other wounds that would be anticipated hallmarks if he had accidentally plunged into the river basin from any sort of elevation.
“With the trajectory he’d have to fall to end up in those waters, Riley would’ve sustained serious head trauma or broken bones. But his body was pristine,” Whiteid relayed with solemn disbelief. “That’s just not congruous with an accidental drowning.”
The night of his vanishing, the ill-fated Strain had been booted from a rowdy Broadway hostlery called Luke’s 32 Bridge in an inebriated state after imbibing a rum and coke cocktail his mother suspects may have been insidiously spiked based on its allegedly unsettling taste.
“He told me it just didn’t taste right,” recounted Michelle Whiteid. “Which makes me think there could’ve been some sort of synthetic substance slipped into his drink.”
Surveillance footage and witness accounts confirm the underage Strain was exhibiting severe intoxication symptoms after his removal from the bar. But the bereaved family has scorched his Delta Chi fraternity brothers as unconscionably derelict for purportedly frittering away hours carousing before finally reporting him as a missing person to authorities.
With the welter of incongruities surfaced by the autopsy, the Whiteids have authorized an independent second examination be conducted. Metro Police have thus far only allowed that, based on the evidence at hand, Strain’s death appears accidental in nature.
But with each supplementary detail further deepening the quagmire of paradoxes surrounding this tragedy, the family remains vehemently unbowed in their dogged pursuit of a truth they avow has not yet been fully uncovered.
“I’ll accept whatever is definitively proven,” Chris Whiteid stated with granite determination. “But every fresh revelation makes it feel increasingly unnatural that Riley ended up submerged completely through accidental circumstances alone.”
