NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — More than a week after University of Missouri student Riley Strain disappeared while on a fraternity trip in Nashville, his bank card was discovered on an embankment by the Cumberland River.
On Friday, March 8, the Mizzou senior was asked to leave Luke’s 32 Bridge, Luke Bryan’s bar on Broadway, after only being served one alcoholic drink and two waters, according to TC Restaurant Group.
“At 9:35 p.m., our security team made a decision based on our conduct standards to escort him from the venue through our Broadway exit at the front of our building. He was followed down the stairs with one member of his party. The individual with Riley did not exit and returned upstairs,” the company said in a statement released one week after the incident.
Surveillance video from Downtown Smoke & Vape Shop on Church Street caught Strain stumbling and falling in a parking lot at 3rd Avenue and Church Street around 9:45 p.m. Then, at 9:47 p.m., surveillance footage caught Strain crossing 1st Avenue North to Gay Street.
Strain’s last phone ping was near James Robertson Parkway and Gay Street between 9:55 p.m. and 10 p.m. Detectives said the last phone conversation Strain had with one of his friends was also during that same time period, but the ping covered about a two-mile radius and didn’t give them a direction of travel or any more details about where Strain might have gone.
A friend of the 22-year-old called 911 on Saturday, March 9 after saying he went to the Central Police Precinct and called the sheriff’s office to file a missing person’s report.
The Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) said its Urban Search and Rescue team has been searching the area around Strain’s last known location near the Cumberland River.
On Thursday, March 14, investigators said there had been no indication of foul play or of Strain being involved in any type of fight or argument.
Then, on Sunday, March 17, police announced Strain’s bank card was found on the embankment between Gay Street and the Cumberland River amid the ongoing search effort for the missing college student.
News 2 spoke with the two TikTokers who have been searching for signs of Strain in Nashville, one since Tuesday, March 12 and the other since Sunday morning. These women have been looking around a wooded area that goes down to the Cumberland River, which is where they said they found Strain’s bank card.
Strain’s family has also been at the scene, as well as detectives, to talk to the women who made the discovery. Strain’s relatives told News 2 that police said members of the Nashville Office of Emergency Management (OEM) were on the way to check the area with boats again, but they wrapped up their efforts by Sunday evening.
The women who found the bank card encourage others to come out and help with the search for the missing Mizzou student. They both put themselves in Strain’s family members’ shoes, saying they don’t want the case to go cold.
“I look more into cold cases, I guess, ones that are from like the 90s and the early 2000s that are unsolved, and I spend a lot of time digging into those and I’ll actually privately message officers and stuff like that, going back and forth with that, but I lived 20 minutes away from this, and so once I heard it was happening and nothing was happening, Tuesday night, I came down here with my boyfriend and we were like, ‘Let’s go, let’s go walk it, let’s go walk it,'” explained Brandy Baenen, one of the TikTokers who discovered the card.
By late Sunday afternoon, Strain’s parents were reportedly on their way to the police station to speak with investigators and review surveillance footage, which was originally supposed to happen on Monday, March 18.
This news comes just hours after crews were called out to the Cumberland River to recover a body seen floating down the river ahead of the Martin Luther King Bridge, but the Nashville Fire Department said the individual surfaced from the water wearing a “maroon colored shirt and does not fit the description of the missing student.”
Meanwhile, the Uvalde Foundation For Kids — a national nonprofit formed after the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Texas and dedicated to ending school violence — announced Sunday morning that a special team of volunteers from its “STOPNOW” school community patrol team’s Nashville chapter has been assembled to help with the search for Strain.
Foundation officials said more than a dozen volunteers are “currently planned in rotation search patrols,” set to support first responders and other volunteer search teams, as well as distribute fliers throughout areas of interest, like downtown Nashville, and online.
Strain is 6-feet, 5-inches tall, with a slender build, blonde hair, and blue eyes, according to his family. If you see Strain or have any information about where he may be, you are asked to call the MNPD at 615-862-8600.
