A thumbprint on Laken Riley’s cellphone. DNA from her fingernails. Video footage of someone dumping a bloody jacket and gloves within half a mile of where her body was found. This is some of the evidence prosecutors say they have against Jose Ibarra.
As the state and Ibarra’s lawyers spar over what evidence can be admitted at trial, details of the case are being publicly revealed for the first time.
Ibarra, 26, was seen with scratches and other injuries the day after Riley’s body was discovered by police on Feb. 22 in a wooded area near the University of Georgia intramural fields, according to prosecutors. They say he looks like the man seen on video footage throwing bloody gloves and a bloody jacket with long dark hair on it into a dumpster within half a mile of Riley’s body less than 30 minutes after she was killed.
Credit: Screengrab
Credit: Screengrab
A fingerprint expert identified Ibarra’s thumbprint on Riley’s cellphone, prosecutors said. They claim Ibarra was captured on various video cameras around a female UGA student’s dormitory and near Milledge Avenue Extension that leads to the running trails Laken Riley used the morning she was killed.
Ibarra is charged with felony murder, malice murder, kidnapping with bodily injury, aggravated assault with intent to rape, aggravated battery, hindering a 911 call, and tampering with evidence. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges as well as to a related allegation that he peeped into a female UGA student’s window the same morning.
Jury selection in his trial is expected to start in the Athens-Clarke County Superior Court on Nov. 13.
Riley, 22, was a student of Augusta University’s nursing program in Athens. From Woodstock, she was an undergraduate student at UGA until the spring of 2023.
Attorneys for Ibarra are arguing that much of the state’s evidence against him is unreliable or was unlawfully obtained without probable cause. They said in recent court filings that the thumbprint “contains incomplete data and did not produce a match to any of those belonging to (Ibarra) during the initial comparison with his known prints.”
The DNA evidence “did not exclude (Ibarra), but also did not exclude another known individual associated with the case,” Ibarra’s attorneys said. They want the court to suppress evidence from two cellphones prosecutors say belong to Ibarra, his social media accounts, photographs of his body and his DNA sample. They claim police had no reason to suspect Ibarra had committed a crime when they detained him on Feb. 23.
His lawyers also asked for his trial to be moved out of Athens-Clarke County, claiming jurors from the community won’t be impartial.
Prosecutors claim Ibarra was detained lawfully under reasonable suspicion he had something to do with Riley’s death. They say the evidence against him was properly collected and should be presented to an Athens-Clarke County jury.
The state is also pushing back on Ibarra’s request for the peeping Tom charge to be tried separately to the nine charges he faces in Riley’s slaying. Prosecutors say both incidents are part of Ibarra’s “single continuous plan to assault women” on Feb. 22.
The state’s theory of what happened that day is outlined in recent court filings. Prosecutors said a UGA student called 911 just before 8 a.m. to report that someone had looked through her dormitory windows and was at her front door. University police responded minutes later, but the perpetrator had disappeared.
At 9:10 a.m., Riley called 911 from her cellphone at a location less than 1,000 feet from the dormitory, according to the state.
“That 911 call – the last outgoing call from Laken Riley’s cellular telephone – was disconnected by defendant Ibarra,” prosecutors said. “These incidents are connected by time, location, motive and items of evidence.”
From 9:24 a.m., several calls and text messages to Riley from her mother went unanswered. Prosecutors said Riley’s mother “launched a search” and that Riley’s roommates went looking for her on the running trails. The roommates called 911 to report Riley missing just after noon, and her “lifeless, beaten, and partially unclothed body” was found half an hour later by university police, prosecutors said.
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Riley was in a wooded area about 65 feet off a running trail.
The next day, law enforcement officers were looking for “a Latino male” seen in video footage near the dormitory and the dumpster of an apartment complex less than half a mile from where Riley was murdered, prosecutors said. They said a police officer saw Ibarra’s brother, Diego Ibarra, at the complex wearing a baseball cap identical to the one worn by the man in the videos.
Diego Ibarra, 28, took the officer to his apartment in the complex, where his brothers, Jose Ibarra and Argenis Ibarra, were also located, prosecutors said. They said more officers were called, and one noticed that Jose Ibarra had scratches and injuries on him. Jose Ibarra was initially arrested on an outstanding bench warrant, and the apartment was searched later that day.
A hearing in the case is scheduled for Oct. 11.
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