On a February morning earlier this year, nursing student Laken Riley, 22, set off on her regular morning jog around the University of Georgia campus. She never returned.
Her disappearance set off a desperate search to find her and bring her home safe – a search that came to a tragic end later that day when her beaten body was found along her running route. Riley died of blunt force trauma in the attack.
Now, Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26, is on trial for Riley’s murder.
His trial was set to begin on November 13 with jury selection but, at a pre-trial hearing, he waived his right to a jury trial and requested a bench trial instead. A bench trial is where a judge decides the facts and makes a ruling on the case, instead of a jury.
On Friday Novemebr 15, his trial finally got underway.
Ibarra, who comes from Venezuela and is not a US citizen, has no known connection to the student and no known violent criminal history. Instead, investigators described Riley’s violent death as a “crime of opportunity.”
Ibarra’s status as a non-US citizen sparked conflicting reports from law enforcement agencies about his criminal past on American soil – and during an election year spurred Republican lawmakers to seize on the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the hour to push offensive theories about migrants online. President Joe Biden also sparked a backlash among some Democrats after referring to him as “an illegal” during his fiery State of the Union speech this year.
Here’s what we know so far about the murder suspect:
Who is Jose Antonio Ibarra?
Ibarra is a 26-year-old Venezuelan migrant, according to ICE records, and appears to have first entered the US within the past two years.
On September 8, 2022, Customs and Border Protection officials encountered Ibarra after he crossed the US’s southern border with Mexico near El Paso, Texas, ICE officials told ABC7 in a statement. He was “paroled and released for further processing,” officials said.
The agency also said that Ibarra had been arrested by the New York Police Department on September 14, 2023 and was “charged with acting in a manner to injure a child less than 17 and a motor vehicle license violation.”
New York officials then released him “before a detainer could be issued,” ICE said. However, the NYPD toldThe Independent that the department has no record of Ibarra’s arrest on file – and so could not confirm whether this account was correct.
There was no known connection between Ibarra and Riley, University of Georgia Police Chief Jeff Clark said at a news conference following the murder. “This was a crime of opportunity where he saw an individual, and bad things happened,” Chief Clark said.
According to prosecutors, Ibarra attacked Riley while she was out for a run.
Affidavits accused Ibarra of “disfiguring her skull” in support of the aggravated battery charge. The filing also claimed that Ibarra used an object to harm her and dragged her body to a “secluded area.”
Hours after Riley was killed, Athens homicide detectives pulled a photo from a surveillance camera of a potential suspect who wore 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 Ibarra.
Ibarra was 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.
According to the indictment, on the day of Riley’s killing, Ibarra also peered into the window of an apartment in a university housing building, which is the basis for the peeping Tom charge.
His bench trial began on Friday November 15, after he waived his right to a jury trial.
Prosecutors have chosen not to seek the death penalty but intend to seek a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Immigration status becomes a right-wing rallying cry
Riley’s murder – and the immigration status of the man charged with it – quickly became a rallying cry for some prominent Republicans to blame migrants for crime in America and blast the Biden administration for its handling of the situation at the southern border.
“Laken Riley’s tragic death struck the hearts of Georgians everywhere and has sparked national outrage,” Georgia Governor Brian Kemp said in a post on X at the time. “Joe Biden’s failed policies have turned every state into a border state, and I’m demanding information from him so we can protect our people when the federal government won’t!”
“The brutal murderer who took the life of Laken was one of the millions of illegal aliens that the Biden Administration simply released and unleashed upon our country,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said on X. “The brutal murderer who took the life of Laken was one of the millions of illegal aliens that the Biden Administration simply released and unleashed upon our country.”
It is a widespread myth that those who migrate to the US are more likely to commit crimes — a recent study from the Pew Research Center revealed 57 percent of Americans believe the large number of migrants seeking to enter the country leads to more crime.
But there is no evidence to suggest people who migrate to the US, including those who are undocumented, commit more crimes than those born in America. In fact, between 2012 and 2018, undocumented migrants in Texas were less than half as likely to commit violent crimes than those born in the US, according to a widely cited, peer-reviewed study from 2020.
