Nashville police on Tuesday released security camera footage of a University of Missouri student who has been missing since Friday, as an intensive search continues.
In the grainy video, 22-year-old Riley Strain can be seen walking down the street and apparently making a wrong turn before leaving the frame.
Asked to leave a downtown Nashville bar owned by country star Luke Bryan, Strain had told his friends he would walk back to his hotel. When they returned, they found his room key but nothing else. They called him, but his phone was apparently dead.
A subsequent search for Strain’s whereabouts via phone pings and Snapchat location information also led nowhere. They searched his fraternity brothers’ hotel rooms and came up empty.
Strain and his Delta Chi fraternity brothers had traveled to Nashville for their annual spring formal and were “out and about,” his stepfather, Chris Whiteid, told WSMV.
“At approximately 9:45 p.m., he was asked to leave Luke Bryan’s bar. They got separated. The boys called him, and he said, ‘I’m walking back to my hotel.’ They didn’t think anything about it,” Whiteid said.
Police did not say why Strain had been asked to leave to bar.
Their hotel was six blocks away, but in the opposite direction from where Strain seemed to be headed. The friend who reported Strain missing said his phone last pinged near the river at about 11 p.m. that night, WKRN reported.
Police described Strain as “6’5″ tall with a thin build, blue eyes and light brown hair.”
Strain’s parents rushed to the city from their home in Springfield, Mo., to help look for their missing son, they told WSMV. Police have searched extensively, both on the ground and via helicopter above the riverbank and Gay Street, where the surveillance footage was from.
The University of Missouri offered counseling services and other support to Strain’s classmates and those searching for the missing college senior and had “been in touch with the family and authorities in Nashville who are working to find Strain,” noting that the trip was a “private event” not sponsored by the school.
“The safety of our community is our highest priority,” interim vice chancellor for Student Affairs Angela King Taylor said in the statement. “Our thoughts are with Riley’s family as the search continues. We will be offering any support to them that we can, and we encourage anyone who needs help to reach out to our counseling resources.”
Bryan has not commented publicly about the disappearance. The Daily News has reached out to his representatives.
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