What we know about Jose Antonio Ibarra, the man charged with murdering a Georgia nursing student
On the morning of February 22, 2024, nursing student Laken Riley, 22, set off on her regular morning jog around the University of Georgia campus. She never returned.
Her disappearance set off a desperate search to find her and bring her home safe – a search that came to a tragic end later that day when her beaten body was found along her running route. Riley died of blunt force trauma in the attack.
Now, Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26, is behind bars charged with Riley’s murder.
His trial was set to begin on November 13 with jury selection but, at a pre-trial hearing, he waived his right to a jury trial and requested a bench trial instead. A bench trial is where a judge decides the facts and makes a ruling on the case, instead of a jury.
Ibarra, who comes from Venezuela and is not a US citizen, has no known connection to the student and no known violent criminal history. Instead, police described Riley’s violent death as a “crime of opportunity”.
Ibarra’s status as a non-US citizen sparked conflicting reports from law enforcement agencies about his criminal past on American soil – and over the past several months during an election year has also spurred Republican lawmakers to seize on the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the hour to push offensive theories about migrants online.
Here’s what we know so far about the murder suspect:
Ibarra is a 26-year-old Venezuelanmigrant, according to ICE records, and appears to have first entered the US within the past two years.
Back on September 8, 2022, Customs and Border Protection officials encountered Ibarra after he crossed the US’s southern border with Mexico near El Paso, Texas, ICE officials told ABC7 in a statement. He was “paroled and released for further processing”, officials said.
The agency also said that Ibarra had been arrested by the New York Police Department on September 14, 2023 and was “charged with acting in a manner to injure a child less than 17 and a motor vehicle license violation”.
New York officials then released him “before a detainer could be issued,” ICE said. However, the NYPD toldThe Independent that the department has no record of Ibarra’s arrest on file – and so could not confirm whether this account was correct.
There was no known connection between Ibarra and Riley, University of GeorgiaPolice Chief Jeff Clark said at a news conference earlier this year following the murder.
“This was a crime of opportunity where he saw an individual, and bad things happened,” Chief Clark said.
Hours after Riley was killed, Athens homicide detectives pulled a photo from a surveillance camera of a potential suspect who wore a distinctive Adidas hat, according to a federal affidavit obtained by The Associated Press.
