A family is pleading for answers in the search for a University of Missouri student who has been missing since Friday after he left a bar in Nashville, Tennessee.
Riley Strain, 22, a senior, was last seen Friday night by friends at a bar in Nashville’s bustling Broadway area, known for nightlife, Nashville police said.
He was visiting town with his Delta Chi fraternity brothers for their spring formal, the St. Louis-Post Dispatch reported, but they got separated after he was asked to leave country singer Luke Bryan's bar, Luke’s 32 Bridge Food + Drink, his family told NBC affiliate WSMV of Nashville.
“At approximately 9:45 p.m., he was asked to leave Luke Bryan’s bar,” Strain’s stepfather, Chris Whiteid, told the station. “They got separated. The boys called him, and he said, 'I’m walking back to my hotel.' They didn’t think anything about it.”
When his friends returned to Tempo Hotel, about a half-mile away, they saw Strain’s room key but no sign of him. When they tried to call him, his phone was dead.
The young men went out to search for him, checked his Snapchat locations, and they went through the other fraternity brothers’ rooms but did not find him, so they called his parents.
Whiteid, along with his wife, Michelle Whiteid, traveled from Springfield, Missouri, to Nashville to search for him.
“We talk every day, multiple times a day,” Michelle Whiteid said. “This is the longest I’ve ever gone without talking to him.”
“We’re in a bad dream. Can we wake up? Please, just let us wake up,” her husband told WSMV.
Chris Whiteid told the Post-Dispatch that according to security video, it appeared that Strain was heading back to the hotel but took a wrong turn. It's not clear where the video was from.
Searches took place Monday, including a helicopter search of Gay Street, the area where Strain was last seen, the riverbank and a ground search, “but to no avail,” police said.
On Tuesday, police shared security video showing Strain, wearing a two-tone shirt, crossing 1st Avenue North to Gay Street at 9:47 p.m. Friday. That cross-section is about 0.7 miles from the bar he was at earlier.
TC Restaurant Group, the operator and owner of Luke’s 32 Bridge, said it, too, was working with police to provide security camera video and other potentially helpful information to aid in the search.
Strain is described as 6-foot-5 with a thin build, blue eyes and light brown hair.