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Murdered Georgia nursing student Laken Riley’s iPhone — which she used in her final moments to call her mom, and which her killer left a thumbprint on after he attacked her — is set to be returned to her family, new court papers show.
The Apple device was critical in clinching the murder conviction against illegal migrant and Tren de Aragua gangster Jose Ibarra in November, because it helped provide a precise timeline of her movements.
It also provided a heartbreaking narrative of the minutes before she was brutally murdered on a running trail in Athens, Georgia on Feb. 22, 2024.
“Good morning, about to go for a run. Are you free to talk?” Riley texted her mom, Allyson Phillips, at 8:55 a.m. roughly 30 minutes before her death.
Riley then rang her mom, who didn’t pick up, just 7 minutes before Ibarra pounced, smashing in her head and asphyxiating her in an attempted sex-assault gone awry, phone records and trial evidence showed.
Prosecutors in Georgia earlier this week asked Judge H. Patrick Haggard to release the 22-year-old Augusta University student’s phone to her family.
“Laken Riley’s family is requesting the return of her cellular telephone,” special prosecutor Sheila Ross wrote in a letter Monday.
Ross said that since the phone was already photographed and forensically processed there was no longer a need for the prosecutor’s office to retain it. And Ibarra’s appeal lawyer “does not oppose” the cell phone being given back to Riley’s family, Ross added.
Haggard must sign off before the phone can be handed over.
Evidence from Riley’s phone was prominently featured at trial — including her text and call logs — since she had the device with her on her final jog the morning when Ibarra, 26.
The iPhone locked shortly after she called her mom — and wasn’t unlocked again until investigators used the device as part of the probe into her death.
Phillips didn’t get back to her daughter until 9:37 a.m. — or 9 minutes after Riley’s heart stopped beating.
Phillips sobbed in the courtroom at trial as a local police sergeant revealed the phone evidence, including increasingly panicked texts and calls from Phillips, Riley’s roommates and others who grew worried when she didn’t return home from the jog. The concerned roommates eventually went to the police that day.
Phone evidence also revealed that Riley managed to make a call to 911 during the 18 minutes she “fought for her life” before succumbing to the attack. Eerie audio of the call was played in court where a male’s muffled voice could briefly be heard before an operator unsuccessfully searched for the caller only for the call to hang up at 9:12 a.m.
Ibarra is currently appealing his conviction and life sentence.
Ibarra’s case was used to prompt legislation, called the Laken Riley Act, signed into law by President Trump last month which requires illegal immigrants charged with certain serious crimes to be detained.
Ibarra — an illegal Venezuelan immigrant was released by the Biden administration after he was picked up crossing the border near El Paso Texas, in September 2022.
He was later arrested in New York City for child endangerment and again for stealing from Walmart in Georgia, both alleged crimes occurring before murdering Riley.
