Laken Riley murder trial updates: Court ends for the day; Suspect Jose Ibarra’s brother expected to testify Wednesday

Updates on trial proceedings are on pause until Wednesday morning.

Court will resume at 8:30 a.m. in Athens, Georgia.

At least two more defense witnesses are expected to testify before closing arguments are made.

Testimony has resumed in the trial of Jose Ibarra, who is accused of killing Georgia nursing student 22-year-old Laken Riley, in a case that became a flashpoint in the national debate over immigration during this year’s presidential campaign.

Follow along with The Independent for updates.

When 22-year-old Laken Riley never returned after going for a morning run on the University of Georgia campus in February, her roommate became worried and called campus police.

The nursing student’s slain body was found later that day in a wooded area behind Lake Herrick, near UGA’s intramural fields on campus, according to University of Georgia Police Chief Jeffrey L. Clark. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

The next day, Jose Ibarra, 26, who is not a US citizen, was arrested and charged with murder in Riley’s death, a case that quickly became a flashpoint in the national immigration debate.

Now, nine months later, Ibarra is on trial for her murder.

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Laken Riley’s murder became a rallying cry for Republicans, an avoidable tragedy that they say encompasses the Biden administration’s handling of the U.S-Mexico border amid a record surge of immigrants entering the country.

Jose Ibarra, an immigrant from Venezuela who entered the United States illegally at El Paso in September 2022, is charged with murder and other crimes for the February slaying.

Immigration was already a major issue in the presidential campaign, and Republicans seized on Riley’s killing, with now-president-elect Donald Trump blaming Democratic President Joe Biden’s border policies for her death.

Republicans used Ibarra’s status to exemplify the ongoing issue at the southern border and touted Riley’s brutal killing as a way to bolster their anti-migrant agenda.

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The first witness on Monday was a University of Georgia Police officer Sgt. Joshua Epps, who testified seeing injuries on Ibarra when he responded to the suspect’s home.

“While speaking to him, I noticed on his right arm, his bicep, there was a scratch,” he told the court.  “On his left arm, he had a forearm scratch that was very similar – which in my mind, looked like fingernail scratches to me.”

“I also noticed on his left wrist, just below the palm, he had a puncture – maybe half an inch wide – that, through my experiences playing sports in high school, and receiving the same injury from fingernails in football, I could see, like, wet flesh, like almost like it was fresh. It wasn’t very old,” Epps said.

Jose Ibarra did not have an explanation for the scratches on his arms, according to Cpl. Rafael Sayan, who testified in court Monday.

Sayan questioned the suspect after the first officer was unable to do so because of the language barrier.

In the body cam footage played in court, Ibarra can be seen pointing to his arms and wrist while speaking to the officer.

“First he says, ‘I don’t have anything there … there’s nothing there,’” Sayan said over the video. “Then he starts pointing at it again, saying that, ‘Oh, it’s just a scratch.’”

Sayan told the court that the scratch looked fresh as it appeared to be moist with bodily fluid, and that “it didn’t look very old.”

During opening statements on Friday, Prosecutor Sheila Ross said Ibarra had been “hunting” for women on the day of the murder but when he came across Riley she “fought” back.

When she “refused to be a rape victim, he bashed her skull in with a rock repeatedly.”

“The evidence will show that Laken fought,” she said. “She fought for her life, she fought for her dignity. And in that fight she caused this defendant to leave forensic evidence behind.”

Riley’s mother sobbed in court during the proceedings.

Defense attorney Dustin Kirby said in his opening statements on Friday that Laken Riley’s death was a tragedy and called the evidence in the case graphic and disturbing.

But he said there is not sufficient evidence to prove that his client killed Riley.

He said prosecutors are relying on conflicting methods to link DNA and fingerprints to Ibarra. And then questioned how Ibarra’s fingerprints could be on the phone if he was supposedly wearing gloves.

“The evidence in this case is very good that Laken Riley was murdered,” Kirby said. “The evidence that Jose Ibarra killed Laken Riley is circumstantial.”

Annie Moorman, a crime scene specialist with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, testified in court on Monday about what investigators found when they searched Jose Ibarra’s apartment the day after Laken Riley’s murder.

She said they collected electronic devices and kitchen gloves, which were “restaurant-style.”

Moorman added that this was important to the investigation because “earlier in the day, officers had located gloves that had been described as looking sort of like these from a bush at the apartment complex.”

No blood was found in the apartment.

Jose Ibarra and his brothers appeared to be laughing when police responded to his apartment the day after Laken Riley was killed, Cpl. Rafael Sayan, a UGA police officer, testified on Monday.

“There was a lot of laughing, giggling – especially when they were talking about how they were woken up, pulled out of the apartment,” Sayan said.

“I would say the vibe or the atmosphere was very relaxed and calm.”