The Last Text Sent by Missing University of Missouri Student Riley Strain Is Very Bizarre

All of social media has rallied behind the search for Riley Strain, the 22-year-old University of Missouri student who disappeared while visiting Nashville. According to PEOPLE, Strain and his Delta Chi fraternity brothers were in Music City for their Spring formal. While there, they went out to Luke's 32 Bridge Food + Drink the evening of March 8, 2024. Around 9:35, Strain was asked to leave by the staff due to disorderly conduct, though they later shared he was only served one drink and two waters.

Based on various surveillance footage, police have been able to cobble together a timeline of Strain's activities after he left the bar. He is seen stumbling several times and at one point, even falls to the ground. A break in the case happened March 19 when a pair of TikTokers stumbled upon Strain's credit card by the Cumberland River, per the New York Post. Authorities are also looking into the last text sent by Strain which read "Good lops." What does it mean? Here's what we know.

Christ Dingman, a spokesperson for the Strain family, told NewsNation that Strain's last text was to a girl he had recently started dating. "She texted him to see how he was doing, if he was having fun. He sent kind of a scripted text back to her saying ‘Good lops,'" Dingman told the outlet. He assumed it was some sort of slang but the girl he texted was also confused. She even did an internet search around it, but came up empty.

The Independent reported that social media users chimed in with theories around the cryptic text. A few people thought lops might be short for "low on power, sorry," but Dingman said that wasn't likely. "What we have been told is the phone did not die due to battery capacity," he told NewsNation. He went on to say that it "wasn’t even at five percent, which some kids run around on and frustrates us as parents."

Many believe that lops was a typo and that Strain was probably trying to type "lol." If you plug lops into Urban Dictionary, you'll find that it's a more intellectual way of saying “LOL.” If the slang dictionary is correct, it is also a "widely applicable way to say LOL."

The United Cajun Navy is an organization made entirely of volunteers that was created in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina hit, via WKRN. "We had just a bunch of good old boys that had boats and took it upon themselves to go out into the waters of New Orleans and start rescuing people, taking them supplies," said David Flagg, the national director of operations. The organization has grown significantly in size since its creation and has dispatched volunteers to several natural disaster sites.

The Strain family contacted the United Cajun Navy who also "regularly gets involved in missing persons cases by deploying boats, drones and dogs for search and rescue missions," reported WKRN. They are cooperating with the Metro Nashville Police Department who are also diligently searching for Strain. Anyone interested in helping should "come prepared with sturdy shoes and rubber gloves as there will likely be lots of debris in some of the areas along the riverbank where officials plan to continue looking."