The father of Laken Riley called her his “angel” and said he wished he could have protected her.
“I wish I would have been there to protect her,” Jason Riley said in an interview NBC News aired Monday morning on the “Today” show. “I wish it would have been me.”
It is believed to be the first interview he’s given since Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student, was killed last month near the University of Georgia’s intramural fields after she went running. Police charged Jose Antonio Ibarra with malice murder, felony murder, aggravated battery, aggravated assault, false imprisonment, kidnapping, hindering a 911 call, and concealing Riley’s death.
“She was like an angel,” Jason Riley said of his daughter.
Riley’s slaying has became the latest flashpoint in the heated national political debate over immigration. Authorities say Ibarra, a 26-year-old Venezuelan, entered the U.S. unlawfully in 2022. He remains booked in the Clarke County jail.
Laken’s father told NBC some people crossing into the U.S. are not being properly vetted, although he is unsure whether that would have made a difference in her case.
“I understand them wanting to come here for a better life,” he said, “but when you have gang members and people who can commit violent crimes, especially against women, I think we can stop some of that.”
Jason Riley voiced discomfort that his daughter’s slaying has become politicized.
“I feel like she’s being used somewhat politically,” he said.
Asked how that made him feel, he told NBC, “It makes me angry. She was much better than that.”
Allyson Phillips, Laken Riley’s mother, and Laken Riley’s stepfather met with former President Donald Trump at his political rally in Rome, Georgia earlier this month. The Republican presidential candidate has blamed the nursing student’s death on lax border and immigration controls by the Biden administration.
Laken’s family declined an invitation by U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, R-Jackson, to attend President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address earlier this month. But Collins, whose district includes Athens, said he got permission from Riley’s parents before introducing legislation that bears her name that would require federal immigration agents to lock up people in the country illegally who have been accused of theft or shoplifting.
At the State of the Union, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and other Republicans tried to hand Biden buttons bearing the name of Laken Riley and urged him to say her name.
She was “an innocent woman who was killed by an illegal, that’s right,” the president said of Riley, but he appeared to mispronounce her name as “Lincoln.”
That drew a rebuke by Riley’s mother, who posted on social media: “Biden does not even KNOW my child’s name – it [sic] pathetic!”
Laken Riley’s funeral was held in Woodstock earlier this month. The family asked media to remain outside.
Since Laken Riley’s killing, UGA committed more than $7.3 million on new safety measures, including emergency call boxes and a bigger police budget.
Jason Riley said he wants people to remember his daughter as a strong person who was caring and loved athletics. He added in the NBC interview that Laken Riley’s mother is establishing a scholarship fund and a foundation in honor of her.
“She was only 22. She had a lot of life left to give to the world,” Jason Riley said.
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