A Venezuelan man “went hunting for women on the University of Georgia campus earlier this year” and killed nursing student Laken Riley after a struggle, a prosecutor said Friday. However, the man’s lawyer says the evidence is circumstantial and does not prove his client is guilty.
Jose Ibarra, who entered the US illegallyis charged with murder in the February slaying that has fueled the immigration debate during this year’s presidential campaign. Ibarra has waived his right to a jury trial, meaning his case will be heard and decided by Athens-Clarke County Superior Court Judge H. Patrick Haggard.
Prosecutor Sheila Ross told the judge that Ibarra met Riley on Feb. 22 while she was running on the campus of the University of Georgia in Athens. Riley, 22, attended Augusta University College of Nursing, which also has a campus in the city about 70 miles east of Atlanta.
“When Laken Riley refused to be his rape victim, he repeatedly struck her skull with a rockRoss said, adding that the evidence would show Riley was “fighting for her life and for her dignity.”
As a result of that fight, Ibarra’s DNA was left under her fingernails, Ross said. Riley called 911 and during a struggle for her phone, Ibarra’s fingerprint was left on the screen, she said.
That forensic evidence is enough to prove Ibarra’s guilt, but digital and video evidence also proves Ibarra killed Riley, prosecutors said.
Augusta University
Attorney Dustin Kirby called the evidence in the case compelling and disturbing, but he said none of it proves his client killed Riley.
“The evidence in this case is very good that Laken Riley was murdered,” he said. “The evidence that Jose Ibarra killed Laken Riley is circumstantial.”
The killing added fuel to the national debate over immigration as federal authorities said Ibarra entered the U.S. illegally in 2022 and was allowed to stay to pursue his immigration case.
Republicans, including President-elect Donald Trump, blamed the Democratic Party President Joe Biden’s border policies before her death. While speaking about border security during his State of the Union address weeks after the killing, Biden mentioned Riley by name.
ELIJAH NOUVELAGE/AFP via Getty Images
Riley’s mother, Allyson Phillips, and other family members packed the courtroom Friday morning but did not return after lunch. Phillips put her face in her hands and often cried, especially when photos of her daughter were shown and during descriptions of what happened to her.
Ibarra, wearing a plaid shirt and dark pants and with his feet shackled, wore headphones to hear a Spanish-language interpreter. He seemed attentive, sometimes looking up when photos or videos were shown and other times looking down at his lap.
During her opening statement, Ross laid out a timeline using doorbell and surveillance camera footage, as well as data from Riley’s phone and watch, to chart her final moments.
Riley left home at 9:03 a.m. and headed to wooded trails where she often ran. Data from her watch shows that she was running at a fast pace at 9:10 am when something happened that caused her to ‘stop dead’. She called 911 at 9:11 a.m
A 911 dispatcher answered, but no one responded when she repeatedly asked for an answer, and then the caller ended the call. The dispatcher immediately called back, but no one answered.
“Her encounter with him was long. Her fight with him was intense,” Ross said, noting that Riley’s watch data showed her heart was still beating until 9:28 a.m.
Ross also played security camera video showing a man she said is Ibarra at 9:44 a.m. in a parking lot at his apartment complex. The man threw something into a trash can and then appeared to throw something into nearby bushes. In the trash, officers found a dark hooded jacket with blood on it that appeared to belong to Riley and strands of long dark hair tied to a button. In the bushes they found black disposable kitchen gloves, one of which had a hole in the tip of the thumb.
Another video from about 35 minutes later shows what appeared to be the same man wearing different clothing and walking to a garbage can with a bag and then walking back empty-handed. Before the police managed to search the bin, it was emptied.
One of Riley’s three roommates testified that she became concerned when Riley didn’t return from a run. The four friends used a phone app to track each other’s whereabouts, and Lilly Steiner testified that she became even more concerned when she saw that Riley’s phone showed her in the same location for a long time.
Riley often spoke to her mother by phone when she ran away, and her mother also became concerned that morning when her daughter did not answer her calls.
Steiner and another roommate, Sofia Magana, walked to the path where the phone app indicated Riley was located. They found what they believed to be one of Riley’s earbuds along the way and returned home to call the police.
One of the officers who responded found Riley’s body partially covered by leaves, 20 meters from the path. Although her shirt was pulled up and her underwear was sticking out above the dropped waistband of her running tights, Ross said there was no evidence that Riley had been sexually assaulted.
Hyosub Shin / AP
Police arrested Ibarra the day after the murder.
Before Ross played video from the officer’s body camera that found Riley, she warned Riley’s family that her corpse would be shown. Riley’s mother left the courtroom, but other family members and friends remained behind, some of them crying or covering their faces during the video.
Ibarra is charged with one count of malice murder, three counts of murder and one count of kidnapping, aggravated assault, aggravated assault, obstructing an emergency telephone call, tampering with evidence and being a peeping tom.
Prosecutors say Ibarra peered through the window of an apartment in a university residential building on the day of Riley’s murder, providing the basis for the peeping tom charge.