Riley Strain’s Final Text Message Revealed

Missing college student Riley Strain’s final text message was revealed on Monday after more than a week since his disappearance on March 8.

Strain, a 22-year-old University of Missouri student, had been on a trip to Nashville, Tennessee, with his fraternity brothers when he disappeared. Surveillance footage shows him stumbling and struggling to walk in a straight line after he became separated from his friends when he was kicked out of country music star Luke Bryan’s bar, Luke’s 32 Bridge. Strain hasn’t been seen since, and his disappearance has sparked a huge manhunt.

Strain is described as 6-foot-5 with a thin build, blue eyes and light brown hair. Anyone with information is asked to call police at 615-862-8600.

According to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs), some 600,000 people go missing in the U.S. every year. Analysis of missing adults over age 21 by Statista showed that 100,492 men and 62,552 women went missing in 2021.

On Monday, a family friend of the Strains, Chris Dingman, spoke to News Nation about the efforts to locate him and revealed the last person who had communication with Strain.

Newsweek has reached out to Metro Nashville Police Department via email for comment.

On the night of his disappearance, a woman Strain was seeing contacted him to see if he was having a good time in Nashville, Dingman said.

“He was seeing a young lady that was a recently new relationship and she is literally the last person that we know that had any communication with Riley from the family,” Dingman said. “She texted him to see how he was doing, if he was having fun. He sent kind of scripted text message back to her saying ‘good lops.’ She said she even had to Google it. She didn’t understand what that slang was.”

Dingman added what he thinks the message demonstrated.

“That just goes to show what kind of state of mind he was in at that time,” he said. “This is all within a 10-minute window of when he was seen to when he went missing.”

Surveillance video last captured Strain on Gay Street near the James Robertson Bridge, according to Metro Police.

Phone tracking last placed him about a half-mile from the bar between Gay Street and James Robertson Parkway. No other surveillance footage captures him beyond that point.

Strain’s disappearance has sparked concerns over whether he was over-served at Luke’s 32 Bridge bar and the Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission said it is investigating, ABC News reported.

TC Restaurant Group, the operator and owner of Luke’s 32 Bridge, said it served Strain only one alcoholic beverage and two waters and asked him to leave in line with their conduct standards. The group did not provide any details about Strain’s conduct.

TC Restaurant Group added that it is working with police “to provide security camera footage and any other potentially helpful information to aid in the search for Riley Strain. Our thoughts are with his family and loved ones for his safe return.”