How an early morning selfie put Laken Riley’s illegal immigrant killer behind bars

A visual reconstruction of Jose Ibarra’s hunt for women on a university campus, and how Laken Riley became his tragic victim

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Less than four hours after taking carefree selfies in the early morning light of February 2022, Jose Antonio Ibarra brutally murdered nursing student Laken Riley while she was out jogging near her university campus.
Ms Riley’s lifeless body was discovered covered in leaves around 50 feet from the wooded trail near Augusta University’s Athen’s campus in Georgia. 
The 22-year-old had been killed by blunt force trauma and asphyxiation.
“On Feb 22, Jose Ibarra put on a black hat, a hoodie, and disposable gloves,” prosecutor Sheila Ross told the court in her opening statement.
“He went hunting for females on the University of Georgia campus. When Laken Riley refused to be his victim, he bashed her skull in with a rock repeatedly.”
It was the illegal Venezuelan migrant’s selfies which helped the prosecution pull together a case against him.
The case was compelling enough for Athens Superior Court Judge Patrick Haggard to convict Ibarra on all 10 counts, including three of felony murder. Mr Haggard was responsible for delivering the verdict after Ibarra waived his right to a jury trial, drawing to a conclusion a murder which became a political lightning rod throughout the 2024 election campaign.
Donald Trump and his allies used the killing to attack Joe Biden’s handling of the border crisis after it was revealed Ibarra had entered the US illegally in 2022.
He had been allowed to stay in the country while he pursued his immigration case.
Ibarra had travelled to Athens, Georgia, according to his former flatmate, after he requested a “humanitarian flight” from New York City to the southeastern state in September 2023 because his brother had suggested there was work available.
He is also understood to have had links to the notorious Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, whose members have terrorised other states in recent months.
The defence tried to argue that the prosecution’s evidence was circumstantial and did not prove Ibarra was responsible for the murder.
But the case included footage from one of Ibarra’s neighbour’s surveillance cameras showing a man, wearing the same outfit the killer had proudly showed off in his selfies, stuffing a jacket stained with Ms Riley’s blood into a blue recycling bin near his home.
The clip was filmed 15 minutes after Ms Riley’s smart watch showed that her heart had stopped beating.
FBI Special Agent Jamie Hipkiss testified that Ibarra’s distinct patterned T-shirt was “consistent with” the clothing worn by the man seen throwing out his victim’s bloodstained clothing.
And Rosbeli Flores Bello, Ibarra’s former flatmate testified that he was the man seen in a video throwing away the jacket.
The jacket was stained with Ms Riley’s blood and contained 29 strands of hair consistent with Ms Riley’s DNA, GBI microanalyst Anne Kisler-Rao testified.
The prosecution said Ibarra also wore “black, kitchen-style disposable gloves” which were discovered with holes near the crime scene.
The gloves, a black Adidas hat, a cutting from a tree and two rocks tested positively for the presence of blood.
A few hours before Ms Riley was killed, a man in a black Adidas baseball cap was seen on CCTV footage at the door of an apartment at a university housing building.
A female graduate student who lived there said she had heard someone trying to get inside her apartment while she was in the shower.
The person ducked as she looked through her door’s peephole – but she later saw him looking into her window.
A timeline of the murder revealed how Ms Riley had tried to call her mother, Allyson Phillips, when she left for a run at around 9.03am.
She had texted her: “Good morning. About to go for a run if you’re free to talk,” some eight minutes before.
The pair often chatted when she would go out to exercise.
Ms Riley’s watch stopped registering her heart rate less than half an hour later, at 9.28am.
The prosecution’s evidence included phone location data pinpointing Ibarra and Ms Riley to the same location.
Phone location data, shared by the prosecution, showed a device linked to Ibarra was “very close” to where Ms Riley’s location data showed she had jogged.
A left thumbprint with DNA matching Ibarra was later discovered on Ms Riley’s phone and Ibarra’s DNA was found under her fingernail.
The prosecution described how Ms Riley “fought for her dignity and her life”.
The court was played bodycam footage of University of Georgia Police Cpl Rafael Sayan confronting Ibarra after the officers woke him and his brothers up to question them.
Mr Sayan said Ibarra “didn’t give me a clear answer at all” when he confronted him about cuts and scratches he could see on his arms.
“First he says, ‘I don’t have anything there … there’s nothing there,’” Mr Sayan told the court. “Then he starts pointing at it again, saying that, ‘Oh, it’s just a scratch.’”
When asked why his knuckles were red, Ibarra said it was because of the cold.
While a phone call between Ibarra and his wife Layling Franco was discounted as evidence, the court heard how she had asked Ibarra: “What happened with the girl?” and “I know you know something.”
The defence had attempted to paint Ibarra’s brother, Diego Ibarra, as the offender.
But in her closing arguments, Mr Ross said such a conclusion would only be possible if Diego had “magic pixie dust” and “Harry Potter’s invisible cloak” to plant his brother’s DNA under Ms Riley’s fingernails.
Appealing to the judge to find Ibarra guilty, Ms Ross told the court: “We are asking you, in your decision, to render a verdict that speaks the truth on what happened that day on the 22nd day of February, 2024, when this man took the life of an innocent woman, just going about her business, living her best life, for no reason. It’s senseless”.
Ibarra showed no reaction as his guilty verdict for all 10 counts was read out.
Ms Riley’s mother and several family members could be heard crying from the gallery.
Ahead of the sentencing, the court had been played a one-minute video of Ms Riley’s mother finding out about her daughter’s death.
The footage showed a distraught Mrs Philips shouting “my daughter” before sitting down with a police officer on a grass verge on the side of the road.
In her victim impact statement, Mrs Phillips said: “On that horrific day, my precious daughter was attacked, beaten and shown no mercy. She fought her life and dignity and to save herself from being brutally raped.”
She added: “This sick, twisted and evil coward showed no regard for Laken or human life… Laken’s life was not the only life taken on that day that Jose Ibarra attacked her. The life of her family and friends was taken, too. None of us will ever be the same.”
Lauren Phillips, Ms Riley’s younger sister, called Ibarra “inhumane” and “the epitome of evil”.
She said she feared walking around the University of Georgia campus, where she also studies “because I am terrified of people like Jose Ibarra”.
“Jose Antonio Ibarra has completely and utterly ruined my life, and I can only hope and pray that he receives a sentence that ruins his”, she said.
Mr Haggard sentenced Ibarra to life in prison without the possibility of parole, the maximum sentence available.
The judge, whose father was killed in an armed robbery, said those impacted by such tragedies sometimes have to “make a conscious effort to breathe”.
He told the court: “There’s very little, including the sentence of Mr Ibarra, that’s going to help much and I acknowledge that.”
Following the verdict, Mr Trump said he hoped the conviction would “help bring some peace and closure to her wonderful family who fought for justice, and to ensure that other families don’t have to go through what they have”.
He added: “It is time to secure our border, and remove these criminals and thugs from our country, so nothing like this can happen again!”
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