Fresh insights are surfacing regarding the tragic morning when Wisconsin graduate student Eliotte Heinz was found dead in the Mississippi River. Locals vividly describe the unsettling moment a fisherman discovered her body floating face down.
The 22-year-old student from Viterbo University disappeared early Sunday after a night of bar-hopping with friends, as reported earlier by Fox News Digital. She was last observed walking by the Mississippi River waterfront around 3:30 a.m., and later seen on surveillance close to her apartment, which was less than a mile away.
A fisherman discovered her body in the river shortly before 10:30 a.m. local time on Wednesday near Brownsville, Minnesota, which is over a dozen miles from where she was last seen, according to officials.
The owner of a marina bar near the spot where Heinz’s body was found told Fox News Digital the young fisherman found the body face down and wrapped in duckweed. The body could be seen from the shore.
A business owner, located just steps from the last bar Heinz visited before the tragic discovery on the Mississippi River, insisted that despite the area’s history of fatal drownings, locals still view downtown as a safe and vibrant community.
“It’s definitely a college town, specifically the downtown area on Third Street,” Muy Caliente Taco Broz owner Eric Mora told Fox News Digital. “It’s pretty relaxed, being the younger crowd drinking. It’s never anything too concerning, in my opinion. We get the late-night crowd going into Taco Broz, and we’ve rarely ever had any issues. For the most part, it’s just a bunch of drunk college students, just having fun.”
Exterior view of Bronco’s Bar in La Crosse, WI, Wednesday, July 23, 2025. The bar is the last place where late Viterbo grad student Eliotte Heinz was seen alive. (LB/Splash for Fox News Digital)
Mora said it is more common for young barhoppers to call a rideshare service after a night out. However, he noted many college students do choose to walk home.
“Just in general, I don’t know if it would be a wise idea to be walking alone late at night in any city or in town, but since it’s a college town, we do see a lot of college students tend to walk, even after a night out,” he said. “At least from my time in college, it was rare that anybody would ever want to go down there toward the river… This is, at least for me, the first time of hearing something like this. It definitely came to us as a shock.”
Taco Broz, which opened its downtown location in December, was closed on the night Heinz went missing. Had it been open, Mora said he would have offered help.
“I wish we would have stayed open,” he said. “[Maybe] we would have seen something if she would have came in.”
Heinz’s family said they are embarking on a path to healing.
“Eliotte is a beautiful person,” the family wrote in a statement to Fox News. “She was smart, funny, caring and loved fiercely by us. We don’t know why we were so blessed to have her as a daughter, or why we were unable to keep her. She’s amazing and would have continued to amaze us. Eliotte’s walk home is finished. Unfortunately, our families walk down this new hard path is just beginning.”
