Tragic news about a student who jumped off a bridge in Kaunas: her body was carried by the river to Russia

The search for the 22-year-old student in Lithuania ended in tragedy. Four months after her disappearance, it turned out that the girl’s body was carried by the Nemunas river to Russia.

Employees of the Kaunas district police commissariat received information that the body of a young woman was found in Russia, in the Kaliningrad region. According to preliminary data, it is a Lithuanian student who disappeared on January 12 in Kaunas.

“It is expected that additional tests will be carried out to identify the body,” writes Lrytas.lt, referring to the Kaunas police report. A girl who came from Klaipeda to study in Kaunas lived in one of the city’s hostels. Shortly before the tragedy, she published a disturbing message on social networks that she had been humiliated.

“I’m on the Radzinauska (Lampeđu) bridge. I don’t want to live in a world where rapists win,” the girl’s Facebook post published on January 12 around 4:00 a.m. said. There, the girl described other details and named the people she believed to be her abusers. They are her peers – three boys and one girl.

The portal Lrytas.lt, after checking publicly available information on the Internet, came to the conclusion that all these people are students of Kaunas University. The 22-year-old girl disappeared the same night. According to the phone signal, it was established that she made the last recording while actually being on or near the said bridge.

Portal Lrytas.lt contacted Kaunas prosecutor Arun Čepkauskas, who is investigating this case. He told the portal that many witnesses were questioned – her relatives, classmates and other acquaintances. “None of them confirmed that the girl suffered from humiliation, at the moment there are no facts that this could have happened,” Chepkauskas said. All four students she named in her message also testified, he said.

The information at Lrytas.lt’s disposal shows that none of them admits to having humiliated him or offended him in any other way.

Immediately after the disappearance, police officers searched the banks of the Nemunas River, the area around the hostel where the girl lived, drones were used, police canines with service dogs were involved, and CCTV footage was reviewed. Firefighter divers were initially unable to conduct an underwater search because the river was icy and dangerous at the time, in mid-January, but after a while the weather cleared.

Diena.lt portal reports that the mother of the dead girl recognized her daughter and her belongings based on the photos received from Russia with the help of Interpol. According to the portal, the body was washed ashore in the Neman River in the Kaliningrad region, near the border checkpoint.

On April 13, local media reported on the discovery of the Russian border guards, inviting those who are looking for a missing girl of a similar age to contact them. A woman sent a link to this article to the Lithuanian police. Lithuanian law enforcement officers contacted Interpol and asked for help. Last week, photos of the dead girl and her belongings were sent from Russia. Although the mother has already recognized her dead daughter and her belongings from the photographs, the case will be closed only after receiving an official expert opinion.

Prosecutor Čepkauskas told the Lrytas.lt portal that he cannot predict how long the forensic medical examinations will take and when the student’s remains will arrive in Lithuania from Russia.