Athens, Ga. — A case that stunned the nation in its brutality has come to an end.
Athens-Clarke County Superior Court Judge H. Patrick Haggard convicted undocumented migrant Jose Ibarra of the brutal slaying of nursing student Laken Riley, 22.
Haggard sentenced Ibarra, 26, to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the Feb. 22 murder.
Riley was a student at Augusta University’s Athens campus. Her body was found in a wooded area near the University of Georgia trail. She was struck in the head with a rock multiple times and asphyxiated, according to court documents.
"In my mind, the judge had no alternative other than finding Ibarra guilty in the murder of Laken Riley. Yes, a verdict has been rendered. But he's not the only one sentenced in this case," said Nancy Grace of Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. "Her mother, her family are sentenced to life without Laken... sentenced to life remembering what she suffered and those last images of her running free."
Grace added, "This was a bench trial, the defense wanted to have the case heard before a judge and not a jury. So, throughout this entire trial we have seen great deference given to Laken Riley's family.”
Haggard found Ibarra guilty of all 10 counts against him: one count of malice murder; three counts of felony murder; and one count each of kidnapping with bodily injury, aggravated assault with intent to rape, aggravated battery, obstructing an emergency call, evidence tampering and being a peeping Tom.
In shocking testimony, Sgt. Sophie Raboud of the University of Georgia Police Department Criminal Investigations Division recounted the last moments of Riley's life, breaking down the minutes into a timeline.
Preparing for the last jog of her life, Riley reaches out to her mother by text at 8:55 a.m. asking if she's free to talk. At 9:03 a.m., Riley calls her mother. Riley then listens to music and is seen on a trail camera at 9:05 a.m. She carries her iPhone in her left hand. At 9:06 a.m., she runs out of view of the camera.
At 9:11 a.m. Riley calls 911 and a dispatcher answers, but no one responded and the call ended.
At 9:24 a.m. an incoming call from her mother isn't answered.
Riley’s mother, Allyson Phillips sobbed in the courtroom at the memory of those last exchanges with her daughter before she called her in a panic, repeatedly.
Data later collected from Riley’s Garmin watch showed her heart was no longer beating at 9:28 a.m. She never replied to her mother's text at 9:30 a.m. and failed to answer her calls. Her mother sent another frantic text at 9:58 a.m.
“You're making me nervous, not answering when you're out running. Are you okay?”
Another text at 11:47 a.m. from Phillips: “Please call me. I'm worried sick about you.”
“This information that you collect from not only the victim's cell phone, but the defendant cell phone and the Garment watch really puts it all together,” said former FBI agent, Scott Eicher. “It was fantastic how the cast agent that testified in this case and the officers that downloaded the Garment information pulled it all together to show the judge that the defendant's phone and the victim's phone were in the same area at the time of her death... at the time her heart stopped beating. It's sad, but it's fantastic when we can get this information together all at once.”
"She was so brutally murdered," shared Grace. "And mom has to remember those moments we're talking about. And the judge sees all of this happening and he knows what the evidence is. Mom has to sit there and listen to the call where her daughter tried to call her, where her daughter was texting her, her trying to call back, those moments where she had no idea Laken was already dead or was in the middle of an attack."
Renown psychiatrist Dr. Angela Arnold, MD told Grace, "Nancy, I am not sure that this is something that her mother will ever be able to recover from. This is a trauma that she has suffered. And anyone who is a mother, I'm sure is feeling the exact same way about this. How unsafe, that somebody can just go out on a run... I feel for that mother from the bottom of my heart. Nancy, it's a tragedy beyond belief."
Annie Gimbel
