New details are emerging about the fateful morning when Wisconsin graduate student Eliotte Heinz was discovered lifeless in the Mississippi River, as locals vividly recount the chilling moment a fisherman found her body floating face down in the water.

The 22-year-old Viterbo University student vanished Sunday morning after a night out at the bars with friends, Fox News Digital previously reported. She was last seen walking along the Mississippi River waterfront at about 3:30 a.m., and later spotted on surveillance footage heading toward her apartment, which was less than a mile away.

Her body was found by a fisherman in the river just before 10:30 a.m. local time Wednesday near Brownsville, Minnesota—more than a dozen miles from her last known location, according to authorities.

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.”