University of Missouri senior Riley Strain‘s body was recovered from the Cumberland River in Nashville, Tennessee, on March 22, 2024, about eight miles from Strain’s last confirmed location. Strain disappeared on March 8, and a massive search was launched, capturing headlines and online interest nationwide.
Five days before Strain was discovered, on March 17, another body was found floating in the river, according to WBLR.com. According to the authorities, the body was confirmed not to be Strain or the remains of 15-year-old Sebastian Rogers, another missing person from Nashville. The person’s shirt did not match Strain’s, nor did the person match Strain’s description, Nashville police said. To date, the identity of the body found on March 17 and the circumstances of their death have not been publicly disclosed.
Divers searched for Strain the next day
The next day, March 18, divers were used for the first time since Strain disappeared days earlier in a specific area of the water near where Strain was last seen near downtown Nashville. According to the Nashville news outlet WZTV.com, nothing was found at that time related to the 22-year-old Mizzou student in town on a trip with his fraternity.
“Today’s search plan included taking each boat out along a specified area near the riverfront where the missing student was last seen and running each search K9 on the boat individually. Based on indicators from each K9, sonar was used to isolate an area to a more specified area where divers could search more extensively. Nothing conclusive was located, and the search was terminated at 2:30 p.m.,” a Nashville Office of Emergency Management (OEM) statement said.
Riley Strain was found floating in the water
In the end, it wasn’t divers who recovered Strain’s body in West Nashville. A work crew at a cement and concrete manufacturing company with property abutting the river in an industrial part of the city found him after an object was moved in the water, and Strain’s body appeared.
According to The Tennessean, employees at the company were told to be on the lookout for Strain, and that search crews were scheduled to check that stretch of water the same day. Strain’s body traveled eight miles and around two bends in the river before it was discovered.
Nashville Police Chief John Drake said, “We have reports that, normally, under these circumstances, with his height and weight, that he could have surfaced between 14 and 20 days. This is the 14th day, so we were really expecting anytime soon to find him. So we were in the right spot. It’s just unfortunate.” Strain was identified by his clothing, watch, and other forms of ID. Authorities said an autopsy would be conducted. No foul play was suspected.
Sections of the Cumberland are hundreds of feet wide, and it flows east to west through downtown Nashville. Many bodies are recovered in the waterway each year. When the first as-of-yet unidentified body was recovered in the Cumberland after Strain disappeared, authorities were still trying to identify a Jane Doe found in the river in the late 1990s, WKRN reported.
