Newly released surveillance video is offering a brief window into Riley Strain’s final night alive — as it shows the drunken 22-year-old frat boy being escorted out of a Nashville bar just before his disappearance.
The recording — obtained by News Channel 5 Nashville — shows the wobbly University of Missouri student headed down the exit stairs at country star Luke Bryan’s, where staff had issued an alert saying he was getting aggressive with employees.
Strain is escorted by a bouncer, but seems to go willingly, even appearing to laugh at one point as he stumbled down the stairs, the video showed.
Afterward, Strain vanished into the Tennessee night.
Two weeks later, his corpse was pulled from the Cumberland River about 8 miles downstream in what his autopsy declared an accidental death from drowning and intoxication.
Strain was extraordinarily drunk when he disappeared March 8 — the young man’s autopsy report said he had a blood-alcohol level of nearly .3, or more than three times the legal limit.
He also had THC —the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana — in his bloodstream, according to the medical examiner’s report.
Another surveillance camera caught him as he staggered down a Nashville street after being tossed from the bar.
Many suspected foul play at first. But the medical examiner ruled his death accidental.
Strain, who was visiting the state capital with his fraternity brothers, told friends he’d meet them at their hotel about five blocks away.
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But his pals never heard from him, and called the cops the next day.
An investigation revealed a trail of pings from the missing man’s cellphone, and the security footage of what ended up being his final moments.
A local homeless man also told cops he’d seen a man resembling Strain who was “very, very intoxicated” almost fall over a railing into the Cumberland River.