Chilling new details have emerged about the murder of nursing student Laken Riley as Georgia state prosecutors prepare their case against the Venezuelan migrant accused of killing her.
Jose Ibarra, 26, was captured on various video cameras around a female student’s dormitory at the University of Georgia on February 22, prosecutors have argued in court documents.
The UGA dorm near Milledge Avenue Extension leads to the running trails Riley, 22, used the morning before she was killed.
Prosecutors also claim fingerprints matching Ibarra’s were found on Riley’s phone, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
He was later found with scratches and other injuries just one day after Riley’s body was found in a wooded area near the school’s intramural fields.
Ibarra also appears to be the man seen in a video dumping bloody gloves and a bloody jacket with long dark hair on it less than half an hour after Riley was killed.
But the suspect has pleaded not guilty to the young woman’s murder, aggravated assault, kidnapping and other crimes associated with her death.
His lawyers argue much of the evidence against him is unreliable or was unlawfully obtained without probable cause.
The attorneys claim officers had no reason to suspect Ibarra committed a crime when they detained him on February 23, and are asking a judge to suppress evidence from two of his cellphones, his social media accounts, photos of his body and his DNA sample.
The lawyers also wrote in court documents that the thumbprint found on Riley’s cellphone ‘contains incomplete data and did not produce a match to any of those belonging to [Ibarra] during the initial comparison with his known prints.’
DNA evidence ‘did not exclude [Ibarra], but also did not exclude another known individual associated with the case,’ the attorneys argued, according to the Journal-Constitution.
They are also asking for the trial to be moved out of Athens-Clarke County, claiming jurors there will not be impartial.
But prosecutors have hit back at the claims, insisting that the suspect was detained lawfully under reasonable suspicion he was involved in Riley’s death and saying that the evidence against him was properly collected and should be presented to an Athens-Clarke County jury.
The prosecution is also pushing back on Ibarra’s request for a peeping Tom charge to be tried separately to the nine charges he faces for Riley’s murder.
Prosecutors claim both incidents are part of Ibarra’s ‘single continuous plan to assault women,’ as they laid out the suspect’s alleged whereabouts on February 22.
They said an unidentified University of Georgia student called 911 just before 8am to report that someone peeked through her dorm windows and was at her front door near Milledge Avenue Extension.
University police responded just a few minutes later, but the perpetrator was already gone.
By 9.10am, Riley, an Augusta University College of Nursing student, called 911 from her cellphone at a location less than 1,000 feet from that dorm.
‘That 911 call – the last outgoing call from Laken Riley’s cellular telephone – was disconnected by defendant Ibarra,’ prosecutors claim.
‘These incidents are connected by time, location motive and items of evidence.’
Just about half an hour after the phone call, text messages and phone calls to Riley from her mother went unanswered.
The worried mother then ‘launched a search,’ and her roommates went looking for her on the University of Georgia running trails.
They called 911 to report the nursing student missing just after noon that day, and about half an hour later, university police found her ‘lifeless, beaten and partially unclothed body’ in the wooded area near the intramural fields.
Officers said her killing appeared to be a random attack, and announced the next day they were looking for a ‘Latino male’ seen in video footage near the female student’s dorm and at a dumpster of an apartment complex less than half a mile from where Riley was murdered.
An Athens-Clarke County Sheriff’s Office sergeant patrolling Ibarra’s apartment complex later ‘saw in public, in plain view, walking in the apartment complex in broad daylight, a Latino male who was wearing the “identical” hat that was seen in the dumpster video,’ prosecutors said.
The man in the hat identified himself as Diego Ibarra, Jose Ibarra’s older brother, and allegedly gave police a fake green card.
He then allegedly let the officer to his apartment, where Jose and another brother, Argenis, were also located, and the officer called for backup.
Another officer who then arrived on the scene noticed that Jose had scratches and injuries on him, prosecutors said.
He was then arrested on an outstanding warrant, and his apartment was searched later that day.
Prosecutors now say Ibarra hit Riley in the head, asphyxiated her and pulled up her clothing with the intent to rape her.
He is facing charges of malice murder, felony murder, kidnapping, aggravated assault, aggravated battery, hindering an emergency telephone call, tampering with evidence and peeping Tom.
A hearing in the case is scheduled for October 11, and jury selection for a trial is slated to start on November 13.