Southeast
Laken Riley murder: Family of slain Georgia student sobs in court as witnesses describe crime scene evidence
WARNING: GRAPHIC
ATHENS, Ga. – Jose Ibarra, the suspect accused of killing Augusta University nursing student Laken Riley on Feb. 22, returned to court Tuesday for the third day of his trial as the state continues to bring witnesses forward.
Ibarra, a 26-year-old Venezuelan national, is charged with 10 counts in connection with Riley’s murder on the morning of Feb. 22, when Riley was out for her usual morning jog along trails on the University of Georgia campus near Lake Herrick.
The state’s first witness on Tuesday, UGA Police Department Sgt. Sophie Raboud, testified that a suspicious person was seen on trail camera footage on the morning of Feb. 22, lurking between an apartment building housing UGA students on campus and the trails where Riley was eventually attacked and killed for about an hour.
The trail camera played in court on Tuesday shows the suspicious person — whom prosecutors allege is Jose Ibarra — as well as Riley and Riley’s roommates all traveling in the same area between the approximate hours of 6:50 a.m. and 11:50 a.m., Raboud said.
WATCH TRAIL CAM:
Beginning around 6:50 a.m., the suspicious person was captured slinking around in dark clothing and carrying a white cup near the bus stop area, which meets a pathway that leads to the back of Ibarra’s apartment complex.
The video, which was played in court on Tuesday morning, also showed the person going to a student’s door six times before 8 a.m. That student testified on Monday afternoon that she heard and saw a suspicious person in dark clothing looking into her first-floor apartment windows and trying to break in. She called 911 immediately upon seeing the suspicious person.
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Georgia prosecutors showed an image of Laken Riley jogging before her murder, during the trial of defendant Jose Ibarra, pictured in court. (Fox News)
Among the 10 counts Ibarra faces is a “peeping Tom” charge in connection with the break-in incident, which prosecutor Sheila Ross linked to Riley’s murder, saying in her opening statements that Ibarra “went hunting for females on the University of Georgia campus.”
Trail camera footage played in court Tuesday also shows Riley running at 9:06 a.m. on Feb. 22, just minutes before her 911 call at 9:11 a.m., toward trails near the same UGA bus stop where the suspicious person was lurking. She runs past other students on the trails, as well as a group of students waiting for transportation at the bus stop where the suspicious person was seen on the same camera just about an hour prior.
An image displayed on a screen shows Jose Ibarra, who was seen wearing a hat that led the police to his arrest during the second day of his trial at the Athens-Clarke County Superior Court on Monday, Nov. 18, 2024, in Athens, Ga. (Miguel Martinez/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, Pool)
Her mother, Allyson Phillips, cried in court as the footage of Riley’s final moments were played.
“You’re making me nervous.”
“You’re making me nervous. Not answering while you’re out running. Are you okay?” Phillips texted Riley at 9:58 a.m., according to Raboud.
Just after 11:30 a.m., Riley’s roommates can be seen on the trail camera going out to look for Riley with their dog. At 11:47, Phillips texted her daughter, “Please call me. I’m worried sick about you.”
Allyson Phillips, mother of Laken Riley, second left, listens during the trial of Jose Ibarra at Athens-Clarke County Superior Court on Monday, Nov. 18, 2024, in Athens, Ga. (Miguel Martinez/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, Pool)
Just before 10 a.m., Riley’s mother, who frequently spoke with her daughter while Riley was out running — and had in fact spoken to Riley just when the 22-year-old left home to go on her jog — began to show signs of worry that Riley was not picking up her calls, according to cellphone data analyzed by Raboud.
Later on Tuesday afternoon, the courtroom heard details about Riley’s autopsy, as well as details about a microanalysis of small fibers and hairs on certain pieces of evidence.
Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) investigator Anne Kisler-Rao said she inspected the long, dark hairs that were wrapped in a button on a dark jacket that officers located in a dumpster in of Jose Ibarra’s apartment complex. She said 21 of the total 29 hairs on the jacket were consistent with Laken Riley’s hair. She also testified that there would have to be “some sort of force” to remove those hairs from her head because their roots were still intact.
Riley’s younger sister cried in court while details of her death and evidence from the crime scene were discussed in court Tuesday afternoon.
From left, Connolly Huth, roommate of Laken Riley, and Lauren Phillips, Riley’s younger sister, become emotional during the trial for Jose Ibarra at the Athens-Clarke County Superior Court on Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024, in Athens, Ga. (Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, Pool)
Hairs consistent with RIley’s were also found on rocks recovered from the crime scene, Kisler-Rao. Phillips cried quietly during the GBI investigator’s testimony.
Lastly, Kisler-Rao told the court that she inspected Riley’s underwear, which had “damage is consistent with having been torn.” GBI medical examiner Dr. Michelle Dimarco testified before Kisler-Rao that she “did not observe anything that would make [her] believe there was a sexual assault” at the time of Riley’s murder.
Jose Ibarra appears at his trial at the Athens-Clarke County Superior Court on Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024, in Athens, Ga. (Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, Pool)
GBI crime lab tech Katrina Ostapovicz was next to testify and told the courtroom that the dark jacket with hair on it, the rocks recovered from the crime scene and three gloves recovered from a bush near the same dumpster where the jacket was found all tested positive for “likely” blood. She submitted the evidence for DNA testing.
Ostapovicz also tested a black Adidas hat that Ibarra was seen wearing in iPhone photos he took the morning of Riley’s murder, and it also came up positive for blood.
The jacket tested positive for DNA matching Jose Ibarra’s DNA and Laken Riley’s DNA, according to GBI forensic investigator Ashley Hinkle. Additionally, the three plastic gloves tested positive for DNA matching Laken Riley’s DNA, the black Adidas hat with blood on it tested positive for DNA matching Riley’s, and rocks recovered from the crime scene tested positive for DNA matching Riley’s.
A hat allegedly belonging to Jose Ibarra is presented as evidence during the trial for Ibarra at the Athens-Clarke County Superior Court on Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024, in Athens, Ga. (Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, Poo)
Riley’s fingernail clippings contained DNA matching Jose Ibarra’s DNA more than his younger brother Agenis Ibarra’s and his older brother Diego Ibarra’s DNA, Hinkle testified.
“The match is 10 million times more probable than a coincidental match to an unrelated person in the population.”
“The DNA match between the wet, dry swabs, from [Riley’s] fingernail clippings from the right hand … was to Jose Antonio Ibarra,” Hinkle testified Tuesday. “The match is 10 million times more probable than a coincidental match to an unrelated person in the population.”
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The defense began questioning witnesses after 3 p.m. on Tuesday. Jose’s older brother, Diego, was their third witness. Diego walked into the courtroom at 4:30 p.m. wearing an orange jumpsuit and shackles around his wrists. Diego is currently facing federal green card fraud charges for showing a false ID with two different birthdays to police when they arrived at his apartment to question him and his brothers on Feb. 23.
Diego’s defense attorney expressed to Jose’s attorney, John Donnelly, that Diego should not testify in Jose’s trial, Donnelly said. Judge Haggard advised that the court should not proceed with Diego’s testimony, and then the prosecution and defense met to discuss the matter behind closed doors.
Diego Ibarra is seen wearing a Chicago Bulls hat. (Middle District of Georgia)
The defense’s second witness, Stephanie Slaton, lived in an apartment next to the Ibarra family at the time of Riley’s murder. She testified that she spoke to Diego Ibarra on Feb. 23, the day after Riley died, while “a lot” police were walking around in the area of the complex.
Diego Ibarra suggested he did not know why police were walking around and asked Slaton what had happened. Slaton, in turn, explained that someone had “passed away” behind their apartment complex. Two police officers then approached them and asked what they were talking about. Slaton answered them, and they walked away, she said.
Slaton then testified that Diego, whom she had a sexual relationship with at the time, used a translator app to tell her in English, “If you tell them, I will tell them you did it and then I will kill you too.”
On cross examination, Slaton admitted that she could not speculate what Diego meant by “if you tell them” because he had been unfamiliar with Riley’s murder and the reason police were walking around their apartment building. She also admitted that she had been angry at Diego for having relations with another woman.
On Monday, the second day of Ibarra’s trial, the court heard a recorded prison phone call between Ibarra and his wife, Layling Franco, that was played aloud and translated by an FBI analyst who spoke fluent Spanish. Judge Patrick Haggard on Tuesday ruled that the translated call could not be submitted as evidence.
Layling Franco walks outside a migrant shelter in Queens, NY on Saturday, February 24, 2024. Franco is the wife of Jose Antonio Ibarra, who was arrested in Georgia on suspicion for killing 22-year-old university student Laken Riley. (Brigitte Stelzer)
“She said that she thinks it’s crazy that they don’t have anyone else’s DNA. They only have his. And she says she doesn’t understand how someone can see someone dying and not calling [sic] 911,” FBI analyst Abeisis Ramirez testified in court on Monday while translating the call for the prosecution.
The call placed Ibarra at the crime scene, according to Fox News contributor Paul Mauro, a former executive officer for the New York Police Department’s Intelligence Operations and Analysis Bureau.
“She very clearly doesn’t believe him. … She says, at one point, ‘Jose, I know you,’ a very … telling moment,” Mauro said of the calling with Franco.. “And then at one point … the real crushing statement is when she says to him, ‘I can’t believe somebody could see somebody dying and not call 911.’”
Mauro said he believes the phone call seems to “be a reference to him having told her, I was there, I saw the body, but I didn’t call 911, and I didn’t do it.”
Laken Riley poses for a photo posted to Facebook. Riley, a nursing student at the University of Georgia, was found dead near a lake on campus on Feb. 22. An illegal immigrant has been charged with her murder. (Laken Riley/Facebook)
“The most interesting thing, I thought, was actually the most prosaic, which is the fact that [Riley] has fingernail scrapings — she had skin under her fingernails — from fighting for her life, and Jose had injuries with having gotten those injuries from that kind of a fight,” Mauro said, referring to UGA Police Department bodycam footage played in court on Monday that showed investigators looking at Ibarra’s body for signs of injury.
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Bodycam footage from that morning show officers’ first encounter with Ibarra on Feb. 23. They initially arrived at the apartment around 8:30 a.m. on Feb. 23 and questioned Jose’s brothers, Diego and Argenis Ibarra, before they obtained a search warrant and went inside the apartment.
WATCH: POLICE ENTER JOSE IBARRA’S APARTMENT:
The footage shows officers walking inside shining a light on Jose, who was in bed at the time, and repeatedly saying “hola” in an effort to wake him up. After about a minute, Jose gets out of bed and puts his hands up.
“This is speculation, but I suspect he was likely highly intox[icated],” Mauro said, noting that investigators linked a white plastic cup containing a liquid smelling of alcohol to the scene of Riley’s murder. A suspicious male was seen holding a white cup in security camera footage taken near the crime scene that morning. Late on, investigators found a similar white, plastic cup that smelled of alcohol on Feb. 22, according to law enforcement testimony on Monday.
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A general view of the area where Laken Riley’s body was found near Lake Herrick on the University of Georgia’s campus in Athens, Georgia on Saturday, February 24, 2024. Jose Antonio Ibarra has been charged with the murder of Riley after she was killed earlier this week. (Mark Sims for Fox News Digital)
The suspect is charged with 10 counts total, including one count of malice murder, three counts of felony murder, one count of kidnapping, one count of aggravated assault with intent to rape, one count of aggravated battery, one count of hindering a 911 call, one count of tampering with evidence and one count of being a “peeping Tom.” Ibarra pleaded not guilty to all counts.
Prosecutor Ross said Ibarra then encountered Riley on her typical morning run and attacked her.
Laken Riley’s killing has gripped the nation as the border crisis continues. (ELIJAH NOUVELAGE/AFP via Getty Images)
“On Feb. 22, Jose Ibarra put on a black hat, a hoodie-style jacket, and some black kitchen-style disposable gloves, and he went hunting for females on the University of Georgia campus,” Ross said in her opening statement Friday.
Ibarra and his brothers, also in the United States illegally from Venezuela, lived in an apartment building less than a half mile from the on-campus park where Riley was running.
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Jose Ibarra, accused of killing a Georgia nursing student earlier this year, listens through an interpreter as he sits with his attorneys Dustin Kirby, second left, and Kaitlyn Beck, left, during his trial at Athens-Clarke County Superior Court, Friday, Nov. 15, 2024, in Athens, Ga. (Hyosub Shin/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, Pool)
The defendant’s attorney, Dustin Kirby, argued in his opening statement that evidence would not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Ibarra killed Riley. He said it would take “gymnastics” for the prosecution to argue Ibarra killed Riley with what he described as “circumstantial evidence.”
“If that happens and the presumption of innocence is respected, there should not be enough evidence to convince you beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Ibarra is guilty of the crimes charged,” Kirby said on Monday.
Jose Ibarra looks down as he listens through an interpreter during his trial at the Athens-Clarke County Superior Court on Monday, Nov. 18, 2024, in Athens, Ga. (Miguel Martinez/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, Poolv)
UGA Police Chief Jeffrey Clark previously described the murder as a “crime of opportunity” during a February press conference.
Ibarra illegally crossed into the United States through El Paso, Texas, in September 2022 and was released into the U.S. via parole, ICE and DHS sources previously told Fox News.
Laken Riley poses for a photo posted to Facebook. Riley, a nursing student at the University of Georgia, was found dead near a lake on campus on Thursday, February 22, 2024. (Allyson Phillips/Facebook)
Diego Ibarra, who worked briefly in a UGA cafeteria before his arrest in February, is charged with green card fraud and had ties to a known Venezuelan gang in the U.S., called Tren de Aragua, according to federal court documents.
ICE previously confirmed to Fox News Digital that Jose Ibarra had been arrested by the New York Police Department a year after he entered the U.S. in August 2023 and was “charged with acting in a manner to injure a child less than 17 and a motor vehicle license violation.”
Fox News’ Adam Shaw contributed to this report.
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