An FBI special agent testified Monday that electronic location data appears to place a nursing student in Georgia. Laken Riley and the a man accused of killing her in the same wooded area at the time of his death. Meanwhile, prosecutors also played a recording of Ibarra being questioned by his wife about the case during a jailhouse phone call.
Jose Ibarra26, is charged with murder and other crimes in connection with Riley’s death in February. He waived his right to a jury trial, meaning Athens-Clarke County Superior Court Judge H. Patrick Haggard will hear the case and decide on his own whether he is guilty or innocent. Ibarra.
THE murder of 22-year-old woman fueled the national debate over immigration during this year’s presidential campaign when federal authorities said Ibarra entered illegally to the United States in 2022 and was allowed to remain in the country while he pursued his immigration case.
FBI Special Agent James Burnie told the court Monday that he reviewed location data from Ibarra’s cell phone as well as Riley’s cell phone and smart watch. GPS data from Riley’s watch places her very precisely in the wooded area with running trails where her body was found on February 22. Pings between Ibarra’s phone and cell towers and the fact that his phone was not establishing any Wi-Fi connection at that time. indicate he was also likely in the woods, Burnie said.
Prosecutors also played a recording of a jailhouse phone call from May between Ibarra and his wife, Layling Franco. FBI specialist Abeisis Ramirez, who translated the call from Spanish, said Ibarra told Franco he was at the University of Georgia looking for work and that his wife repeatedly said that She had had enough and wanted him to tell the truth.
Franco “keeps asking, ‘What happened to the girl?'” and said Ibarra “must know something,” Ramirez said. He replies, “Layling, that’s enough.” Ramirez said Franco told Ibarra it was crazy that police only found his DNA.
Miguel Martinez/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, Pool
Ibarra is charged with one count of malicious murder, three counts of felony murder and one count each of kidnapping, aggravated assault, aggravated battery, obstructing an emergency telephone call, of tampering with evidence and being a voyeur.
Ibarra took selfies early on the day Riley was killed, according to testimony from an FBI agent who analyzed data from cellphones seized from the apartment where Ibarra lived with his two brothers and two others. In the photos, Ibarra is wearing a black Adidas baseball cap and a dark hooded jacket.
Hours before Riley’s death, a man wearing a black Adidas baseball cap was captured on surveillance video at the door of a first-floor apartment in a University of Georgia housing complex. A graduate student who lived there testified Monday that she heard someone trying to enter her apartment while she was in the shower. As she looked through the peephole, the person ducked and walked away, but then she saw the same person looking out the window, she said.
Police, using a grainy screenshot from surveillance video, approached a man wearing a black Adidas cap the day after the killing. It turned out to be Diego Ibarra, one of José Ibarra’s brothers.
University of Georgia Police Sgt. Joshua Epps said he was called to question Diego Ibarra outside the apartment where the Ibarras lived. Epps testified that the brother had no obvious recent injuries.
Outside the apartment, police also questioned Argenis Ibarra, José Ibarra and Rosbeli Elisbar Flores Bello. Epps and Corporal Rafael Sayan, who speaks Spanish and helped with the interrogation, said they noticed scratches on Jose Ibarra.
When asked why his knuckles were red, Jose Ibarra said it was because of the cold, but didn’t really explain the numerous scratches on his arms, Sayan said.
Security video from the apartment complex showed a man wearing a shirt with a distinctive pattern throwing something into a trash can. A Georgia Bureau of Investigation crime scene specialist said there were a lot of clothes in the one-room apartment, but she did not find that shirt in the apartment and did not find no bloody clothes.
A police officer said Friday that he found a dark hooded jacket in the trash seen in the video and that tests revealed Riley’s blood on the hood.
Flores Bello identified the man in the video as José Ibarra and confirmed that identification on the witness stand Monday. She said she had seen him wearing the dark hooded jacket before and thought it was strange that he threw it away.
Testifying through an interpreter, Bello said he met Ibarra in Queens, New York. Ibarra’s brother Diego lived in Athens and had urged Ibarra to move there, saying they would find work. She traveled with Ibarra to join her brother in Georgia. She said they went to the Roosevelt Hotel, which served as a reception center for migrants, to request a “humanitarian flight” to Georgia in September 2023. When they arrived in Atlanta, a friend of Diego Ibarra picked them up and took them to Athens.
Riley was a student at Augusta University College of Nursing, which also has a campus in Athens, about 70 miles east of Atlanta.
Republicans, including President-elect Donald Trump, have blamed Democrats. President Joe Biden’s border policies for his death. While speaking about border security during his State of the Union address a few weeks after the killing, Biden mentioned Riley by name.
In March, FBI Director Christopher Wray proposed unusually long comments about Riley’s murder.
“I want to tell you how heartbroken I am, not just for the family, friends, classmates and staff who are mourning the loss of Laken,” Wray told a group gathered at the University from Georgia. “I am saddened to see this sense of peace shattered by the murder of Laken and the subsequent arrest of a Venezuelan national who entered the country illegally in 2022.”
He said the FBI did “everything [it] can help get justice for Laken. »
