ATHENS, Georgia — Jose Ibarra, the illegal immigrant and Tren de Aragua gang member accused of viciously murdering 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley, was found guilty of all charges in an Athens, Georgia courtroom Wednesday.
Judge Patrick Haggard handed down the guilty verdicts on a range of charges, returning to the bench just 19 minutes after the prosecution and defense presented their closing arguments.
Sobs filled the gallery as the verdicts were read, Riley’s family held hands and wept while Ibarra remained motionless seated in the courtroom.
The defense called only three witnesses before resting their case Wednesday morning — Ibarra and his fellow gang member brother, Diego, did not testify.
Prosecutor Sheila Ross recounted the facts of the case for about 45 minutes in her closing argument, calling the evidence in the case against Ibarra “overwhelming.”
The defense tried to pin the vicious killing on Jose’s brother, Diego, arguing he wore a hat with Riley’s blood on it.
But Ross shot that down, saying he’d need “magic pixie dust” or “Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak” to have pulled off the murder.
Judge Haggard returned to the bench just 19 minutes after the sides presented their closing arguments to deliver the verdicts.
Sobs filled the gallery and Riley’s family held hands as Haggard read off the guilty verdicts for felony murder, malice murder, kidnapping with bodily injury, aggravated assault with intent to rape, and peeping tom charges.
Ibarra remained motionless and expressionless in the courtroom as he was convicted on all counts.
Riley was brutally killed Feb. 22 as she jogged on the University of Georgia campus, not far from Augusta University where the well-liked 22-year-old was pursing her nursing degree.
Ibarra, 26, attempted to sexually assault the coed but ended up smashing her head with a rock and asphyxiating her to death when she fiercely battled back.
Prosecutors said Riley valiantly “fought for her life” for a staggering 18 minutes, gouging deep scratches into Ibarra’s neck and wrists before the much larger man finally overpowered her.
Those scratches — as well as his DNA later found under her fingernails — wound up being key pieces of evidence that help convict her cowardly killer.
Riley’s savage killing at the hands of an illegal immigrant garnered national attention, coming as US is in the grips of a full-blown migrant crisis in which some 12 million people have streamed across the border under the Biden-Harris administration’s watch.
Ibarra ended up in Athens courtesy of a taxpayer-funded flight provided by the administration, traveling from Kennedy Airport in Queens to Atlanta, Ga. in September 2023, New York City sources said.
The flight — which took place fewer than six months before he hunted Riley down as she jogged — was paid for out of federal funds under a Biden administration program that provided one-way flights for migrants to anywhere in the world.
In court Tuesday it was revealed that the slain coed’s mom, Allyson Phillips, missed her daughter’s final text and phone call, which came just minutes before she was attacked.
“Good morning, about to go for a run. Are you free to talk?” the Georgia nursing student texted her mother at 8:55 a.m. Feb. 22 — before then trying her mom by phone less than 10 minutes later, at 9:03 a.m., when she didn’t hear back.
Phillips missed the call — which was made 7 minutes before the 22-year-old was attacked.
Right after Riley’s last call to her mother, her phone locked — and it wouldn’t be unlocked again until authorities did so after retrieving it from the slaying scene.
