OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
12:34 PM – Friday, November 15, 2024
During the court’s opening statements, the heartbreaking 911 call that documented 22-year-old Georgia nursing student Laken Riley’s horrific last minutes alive was played aloud in court on Friday, bringing her distraught mother to tears.
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At around 9:11 a.m. on February 22nd, Riley activated her phone’s emergency feature and dialed 911 while jogging on the University of Georgia campus, according to prosecutor Sheila Ross, who broke down the series of events in the Athens-Clark County courtroom.
The short, muffled phone recording played in court, with only a male voice being heard.
As the operator repeated herself, those in the courtroom could hear her say, “Clark County 911. Hello, Clark County 911. Can anyone hear me?” According to Ross, the operator attempted to call back after the phone connection ended at 9:12 a.m., but she got no response.
During the court’s audio playback of Riley’s 911 call, Allyson Phillips, the victim’s mother, bursted into tears and began wiping her face.
“I know my sweet Laken knew Jesus personally and she will live eternally in His home. He never left her side until the very last second she was here on earth and He will take care of her now and forever in heaven,” Phillips said previously after the news of Ibarra’s arrest.
The chilling call was played in court while Riley’s suspected murderer, Jose Ibarra, a Venezuelan illegal alien who unlawfully crossed into the U.S. under the Biden-Harris administration, sat expressionless, unfazed, and unemotional.
In 2022, Ibarra was arrested after entering the U.S. illegally; however, he was “paroled and released for further processing” soon after, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Additionally, ICE said in a news release that he was arrested later by New York City police in September 2023 and charged with “acting in a manner to injure a child less than 17 and a motor vehicle license violation.” However, Ibarra was freed again “before a detainer could be issued.”
The NYPD claimed to not have a record of Ibarra’s arrest when questioned about it in a subsequent release at the time. “There are no arrests (of Ibarra) on file,” the NYPD public information office said in an email to CNN.
Meanwhile, prosecutors described Riley’s 18-minute fight for her life earlier in the opening statements.
According to the state prosecutor, Ibarra found Riley while out “hunting for females” on the scenic Athens, Georgia, campus.
“When Laken Riley refused to be his rape victim, he bashed her skull in with a rock repeatedly,” Sheila Ross asserted. “The evidence will show that Laken fought. She fought for her life, she fought for her dignity, and in that fight, she caused this defendant to leave forensic evidence behind. She also marked her killer for the entire world to see.”
Sgt. Kenneth Maxwell, the responding police officer who discovered Riley’s body after being alerted, also testified saying that Riley’s shirt was pulled all the way up when he found her, and she was at least 50 feet away from the trail.
“It did not look as if something had unintentionally happened,” Maxwell explained. “It looked more intentional, as if somebody had attempted to either remove her top or maybe had used it to drag her.”
Ibarra’s DNA was found under one of Riley’s fingernails, and his thumbprint was on her cellphone, which, in addition to GPS-phone data, led the authorities to name him as a suspect.
Later that morning, one of Riley’s friends reported to the police that she had not come home from her run, which was untypical of Riley to do so without contacting them. Shortly after noon, the body of the nursing student was soon discovered in a forested area off the running trail.
The Athens-Clarke County coroner’s office told the press that there was obvious “evidence of foul play” at the scene and that it was clear Riley had been brutally murdered.
Ibarra will have his fate decided by Superior Court Judge H. Patrick Haggard. During a court hearing this week, 26-year-old Ibarra gave up his right to a jury trial. It’s unclear why the prosecution team is not seeking the death penalty against him at this time.
Back in March, Biden also had a few words to say in regards to the 22-year-old victim, although he mispronounced her first name.
“Lanken [Laken] Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal,” Biden stated. “But how many thousands of people are being killed by legals? To her parents, I say: My heart goes out to you. Having lost children myself, I understand.”
Biden’s brief statement prompted the liberal mainstream media to go crazy, but not in regards to the tragedy of Riley’s death. Left-wing talking heads in the media went as far as to correct Biden’s “bigoted” terminology, demanding that the president speak more “politically correct” by referring to the violent, murderous foreigner as “undocumented” rather than “illegal.”
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