St. Louis police identify missing student found in Mississippi River

Antonio Arellano-Banda’s disappearance ended with a name attached to a body, but not with a full explanation of how the 20-year-old Washington University in St. Louis student ended up in the Mississippi River. The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department identified him on May 18 after recovering a body from the river near South Broadway on May 13, turning a missing-person search into a death investigation.

Arellano-Banda had been reported missing on May 8, one day after his last known contact with friends on May 7. That timeline gave investigators a narrow window to trace his final movements, and police said personal belongings were later found on Eads Bridge, a detail that helped anchor the case to the riverfront corridor near downtown St. Louis. Local coverage also placed the recovery in the Carondelet neighborhood.

The identification brought painful confirmation for the WashU community. Arellano-Banda was a mechanical engineering student in the McKelvey School of Engineering and part of the Class of 2028. He was 5-foot-6 and 160 pounds, and the missing-person bulletin said he had last been seen wearing a dark-colored jacket and light pants. Those basic details now sit at the center of a case that moved quickly from concern to recovery.

At the time of the police update, the St. Louis County Medical Examiner’s Office was still working to determine the official cause of death. Police said foul play was not believed to be involved at that stage, but that assessment did not answer the central question surrounding the case: what happened between his last contact on May 7 and the recovery in the Mississippi River six days later.

For Antonio Arellano-Banda’s family, classmates and investigators, the river recovery answered where he was found, not necessarily how he got there. The missing-person report, the belongings on Eads Bridge and the body recovered near South Broadway now form the backbone of the timeline, but the final medical findings will determine whether the case stays a tragic recovery or changes into something more.