When 22-year-old Laken Riley never returned after going for a morning run on the University of Georgia campus in February, her roommate became worried and called campus police.
The nursing student’s slain body was found later that day in a wooded area behind Lake Herrick, near UGA’s intramural fields on campus, according to University of Georgia Police Chief Jeffrey L. Clark. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
The next day, Jose Ibarra, 26, who is not a US citizen, was arrested and charged with murder in Riley’s death, a case that quickly became a flashpoint in the national immigration debate.
Now, nine months later, Ibarra is on trial for her murder.
The 26-year-old’s trial was set to begin on November 13 with jury selection but, at a pre-trial hearing one day before, he waived his right to a jury trial and requested a bench trial – where a judge decides the facts and makes a ruling on the case – instead. His trial finally began on November 15.
During opening statements on Friday, Prosecutor Sheila Ross said Ibarra had been “hunting” for women on the day of the murder but when he came across Riley she “fought” back. When she “refused to be a rape victim, he bashed her skull in with a rock repeatedly.”
Defense attorney Dustin Kirby said in his opening that Riley’s death was a tragedy and called the evidence in the case graphic and disturbing. But he said there is not sufficient evidence to prove that it was Ibarra and questioned how his fingerprints could be on the phone if he was supposedly wearing gloves.
“The evidence in this case is very good that Laken Riley was murdered,” Kirby said. “The evidence that Jose Ibarra killed Laken Riley is circumstantial.”
If convicted, Ibarra could face life in prison without the possibility of parole. Prosecutors said they won’t pursue the death penalty.
Here’s what we know so far about the case:
Who was Laken Hope Riley?
Laken Riley was a nursing student at Augusta University, which has an Athens campus.
She was from Woodstock, Georgia, graduated in 2020 from River Ridge High School, where she ran cross country and was a member of the track team, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
In a statement made at the time, Cherokee County schools Superintendent Brian Hightower said: “Our community and our world lost a shining light with the tragic passing of Laken.
“An outstanding scholar athlete, Laken inspired classmates and teachers with her love of learning and her kindness to all. We ask that the community please keep her family in their hearts.”
She was a member of the Alpha Chi Omega sorority at UGA and an avid runner who had completed the AthHalf Half Marathon in October 2023. In fall of the same year, she made the dean’s list at Augusta University.
Riley studied at the University of Georgia through the spring of 2023 before transferring to Augusta University’s College of Nursing, according to a statement from the University of Georgia.
She remained active in the sorority she joined at the University of Georgia, according to the Associated Press.
On the day she disappeared, she had gone for a run on the intramural fields on the University of Georgia campus.
Riley died of blunt force trauma in the attack. University police said that there was no connection between her and Ibarra before her murder.
“This was a crime of opportunity where he saw an individual, and bad things happened,” University of Georgia Police Chief Jeff Clark said at a news conference at the time.
Murder charges
Hours after Riley was killed, Athens homicide detectives pulled a photo from a surveillance camera of a potential suspect in a distinctive Adidas hat, according to a federal affidavit obtained by The Associated Press.
It eventually led them to an off-campus apartment complex where they searched the grounds, and began to piece together details about Jose Antonio Ibarra.
Ibarra, 26, a Venezuelan citizen, was arrested and charged with one count of malice murder, three counts of felony murder and one count each of kidnapping, aggravated assault, aggravated battery, hindering an emergency telephone call, tampering with evidence and peeping Tom.
Affidavits accused Ibarra of “disfiguring her skull” in support of the aggravated battery charge. The filing also alleged that Ibarra used an object to harm her and dragged her body to a “secluded area.”
According to the indictment, on the day of Riley’s killing, Ibarra peered into the window of an apartment in a university housing building, which is the basis for the peeping Tom charge.
Defense attorneys had tried unsuccessfully to have the trial moved out of Athens, to have the peeping Tom charge handled separately and to exclude some evidence and expert testimony.
Prosecutors have chosen not to seek the death penalty but instead are seeking a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Flashpoint on immigration
Ibarra had originally entered the US illegally. He is a Venezuelan national who crossed into the US at El Paso in September 2022.
Federal immigration officials said shortly after his arrest that Ibarra illegally entered the US in 2022 and was allowed to stay to pursue his immigration case.
On top of this, ICE wrote in a statement that Ibarra had been arrested by the New York Police Department on September 14, 2023 and “charged with acting in a manner to injure a child less than 17 and a motor vehicle license violation.”
NYPD then released Ibarra “before a detainer could be issued,” the agency added. However, a spokesperson for the NYPD told The Independent at the time that there was no arrest on file. ICE lodged a detainer on Ibarra following his arrest.
Ibarra’s brother Diego Ibarra was initially arrested on suspicion of killing Riley as he matched the suspect’s description. Diego Ibarra was later charged with possession of a fake green card, according to 13WMAZ.
Immigration was already a major issue in the presidential campaign, and Republicans seized on Riley’s killing, with now-President-elect Donald Trump blaming Democratic President Joe Biden’s border policies for her death.
