Ibarra “Hunted Females” found by Laken Riley

Dressed in a plaid button-down shirt and wearing headphones, Jose Ibarra stared ahead and listened to an interpreter from From English to Spanish as Laken Riley’s friend testified at the trial of an illegal alien for her murder.

“How would you describe yours? relationship with Laken?” prosecutor Lilly Steiner asked Friday morning in an Athens, Georgia, courtroom.

“We were roommates, but the term ‘roommates’ is an overgeneralization of our relationship,” Steiner replied.

“Our home was like a little family, and we called each other our family,” she testified, adding that the slain nursing student brought “a sense of joy to all of our lives that has been missing ever since.”

On the morning of Feb. 22, Riley left her home and went jogging along a wooded trail on the Athens campus of her alma mater, the University of Georgia, but never returned. The Augusta University nursing student’s body was found hours later, and authorities determined she died of blunt force trauma and asphyxiation.

Ibarra, an an illegal alien from Venezuelaon trial for Riley’s murder.

“On February 22nd, Jose Ybarra donned a black hat, a hoodie and some black disposable kitchen gloves, and he went looking for women on the University of Georgia campus,” prosecutor Sheila Ross said in a statement. introduction “And on his hunt he encountered a 22-year-old Laken Riley on a morning run. And when Laken Riley refused to be his rape victim, he repeatedly smashed her skull with a rock.”

In an email Friday to The Daily Signal, Congressman Mark GreenTennessee, who is chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, blamed the Biden-Harris administration for the crime.

“Layken Riley’s killer, Jose Ybarra, was able to commit his brutal, shocking crimes because the Biden-Harris administration let him in instead of speeding him out after he illegally crossed our southwest border,” Green wrote, calling President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

“Unfortunately, stories like Laken’s have been happening across the country since January 2021 thanks to (their) casual disregard for our immigration laws,” Green said.

Ibarra, 26, first moved to America as a illegal immigrant in 2022, according to officials. Ybarra was arrested last year in New York on child endangerment charges, but was released before U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement asked local law enforcement to detain him.

Steiner, Riley’s roommate, told the court she was one of the first to notice her friend might be in trouble that February morning.

Riley, Steiner, and their other roommates used a geo-data sharing app on their cell phones to constantly have access to each other’s locations.

That Thursday morning, Steiner checked on Riley’s whereabouts after waking up to find her friend not home. The app showed that Riley was on a nearby trail that she often ran on, but when Steiner checked it a little more than an hour later, Steiner saw that Riley’s location had not changed.

Another hour later, Steiner and Sophia Magana, a third roommate, went to look for their friend on the jogging trail.

The young women, accompanied by Magana’s dog, found a single AirPod they believed belonged to their roommate, but they didn’t find Riley. They called the police. Authorities found Riley’s body with visible injuries in the woods early that evening.

“The evidence will show Laken was fighting,” prosecutor Ross argued. “She fought for her life, she fought for her dignity.”

“And during that fight, she made the defendant leave forensic evidence,” Ross added, pointing to Ybarra.

Ross, who represents state of georgiasaid Ybarra’s DNA was found under Riley’s fingernails and one of his fingerprints was found on her iPhone.

One of Ybarra’s defense attorneys, Dustin Kirby, began his opening statement with condolences to Riley’s family. Kirby acknowledged Riley’s tragic death but insisted the evidence linking Ibarra to the nursing student’s murder was “circumstantial.”

Kirby questioned the “proprietary software” used to test DNA found at crime scenes. He said prosecutors would point to an alleged hole in one of Ybarra’s gloves that left a fingerprint on Riley’s phone, but argued the hole would not have left such a mark.

Riley’s third roommate, Connolly Hutt, took the stand later Friday morning, telling the court she often accompanied Riley on her runs. Huth was in class that morning when Riley went for a run and didn’t come home.

Huth testified that she received several calls from Riley’s sister before leaving the classroom to call back and ask what was going on.

After learning that Riley was unreachable, Huth told the court, she began to panic because Riley “had been running for a long time, but I knew she had classes that day and I knew she wasn’t one to be late or not go schedule”.

Athens-Clarke County Superior Court Judge G. Patrick Haggard is presiding over the murder trial.

Ybarra waived his right to a jury trial, leaving his fate in Haggard’s hands.