Wearing a plaid button-down shirt and headphones, José Ibarra looked ahead and listened as an interpreter translated from English to Spanish as a friend of Laken Riley took the witness stand at the illegal alien’s trial for her murder.

“How would you describe your relationship with Laken‘” the prosecutor asked Lilly Steiner Friday morning in an Athens, Georgia, courtroom.

“We were roommates, but the term ‘roommates’ is an overgeneralization of our relationship,” Steiner responded.

“Our house was like a little family, and we called each other our family,” she testified, adding that the murdered nursing student brought “a sense of joy to all of our lives that has since disappeared.”

On the morning of Feb. 22, Riley left her house and went for a run along a wooded trail on the Athens campus of her alma mater, the University of Georgia, but never returned. The Augusta University nursing student’s body was found hours later and authorities determined she died of blunt force trauma and suffocation.

Ibarra, a illegal alien from Venezuelais on trial for Riley’s murder.

“On February 22, Jose Ibarra donned a black hat, hooded jacket and black disposable kitchen-style gloves and set off in search of women on the University of Georgia campus,” said prosecutor Sheila Ross in his press release. opening statement. “And in his hunt, he met a 22-year-old Laken Riley during his morning jog. And when Laken Riley refused to be his rape victim, he smashed her skull with a rock multiple times.

In an email sent to the Daily Signal on Friday, Representative Mark GreenR-Tenn., who is chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, blamed the crime on the Biden-Harris administration.

“Laken Riley’s killer, José Ibarra, was able to carry out his vicious and shocking crimes because the Biden-Harris administration released him into the Interior instead of quickly deporting him after he illegally crossed our southern border. West,” Green wrote, naming President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

“Unfortunately, stories like Laken’s have been repeated across this country since January 2021, thanks to (their) casual disregard for our immigration laws,” Green said.

Ibarra, 26, first came to America as a illegal immigrant in 2022, according to officials. Ibarra was arrested last year in New York on child endangerment charges but was released before U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement could ask local law enforcement to detain him.

Steiner, Riley’s roommate, told the court she was among the first to recognize her friend might be in trouble that February morning.

Riley, Steiner and their other roommates used the location sharing app on their cell phones to continually have access to each other’s locations.

That Thursday morning, Steiner checked on Riley after she woke up and found her friend missing. The app indicated that Riley was on a nearby trail that she often ran on, but checking it a little more than an hour later, Steiner found that Riley’s location had not changed.

An hour later, Steiner and Sofia Magana, a third roommate, left to pick up their friend on the running trail.

The young women, accompanied by Magana’s dog, found a single AirPod that they thought belonged to their roommate, but they did not find Riley. They called the police. Authorities found Riley’s visibly injured body in the woods early in the afternoon.

“The evidence will show that Laken put up a fight,” prosecutor Ross argued. “She fought for her life, she fought for her dignity.”

“And in that fight, she caused this defendant to leave behind forensic evidence,” Ross added, pointing to Ibarra.

Ross, representing the state of georgiasaid Ibarra’s DNA was found under Riley’s fingernails and one of his fingerprints was found on his iPhone.

One of Ibarra’s defense attorneys, Dustin Kirby, began his opening statement with his condolences to Riley’s family. Kirby acknowledged that Riley was tragically killed, but insisted that evidence linking Ibarra to the nursing student’s murder is “circumstantial.”

Kirby questioned the “proprietary software” used to test DNA found at the crime scene. He said prosecutors would point to an alleged hole in one of Ibarra’s gloves that left the fingerprint on Riley’s phone, but argued the hole would not allow for such a mark.

A third roommate of Riley’s, Connolly Huth, took the stand later Friday morning, telling the court that she often accompanied Riley on her errands. Huth was in class the morning Riley went for a run and didn’t return home.

Huth testified that she received several calls from Riley’s sister before walking out of class to call back and ask what was going on.

Learning that Riley was unreachable, Huth told the court she began to panic because Riley “was running for a long time, but I knew she had class that day and I knew she wasn’t not one to be late or on leave. calendar.”

Judge H. Patrick Haggard of Athens-Clarke County Superior Court is presiding over the murder trial.

Ibarra waived his right to a jury trial, leaving his fate in Haggard’s hands.