Jose Ibarra and his brothers were “very relaxed and calm” when detained and questioned by police.

In the trial for the killing of University of Georgia college student Laken Riley, police officer Joshua Epps testified that while questioning suspect and illegal immigrant Jose Ibarra and his brother Diego, he noticed scratches on Jose’s arms that were not present on Diego’s. According to prosecutors, Jose Ibarra had Laken Riley’s DNA under his fingernails.

Also admitted into evidence was police body camera footage showing Diego donning a black baseball hat matching one worn by a man surveillance cameras picked up ditching clothing—which contained Riley’s DNA—into a dumpster.

Laken Riley, a then-22-year-old nursing student was found dead February 22nd of this year. Riley went running on a trail in the woods close do the UGA campus. When she didn’t return later that day, her friends used her shared cell phone location to find her, ultimately finding only a wireless earbud belonging to Riley. During opening arguments, prosecutor Sheila Ross said Riley’s body showed evidence of “extended struggle” and died of “blunt force trauma and asphyxiation.”

The police officers further testified that when speaking to Jose Ibarra the day after Riley was murdered, both Jose and Diego were “very relaxed and calm”, with a neighbor additionally testifying they “showed no emotion” when discussing Riley’s murder.

After questioning and detaining the Ibarra brothers, police located disposable gloves in the apartment that matched gloves found in bushes near Ibarra’s apartment building and the crime scene. Additionally, a former roommate of Ibarra told police the person seen in surveillance video discarding clothing that had Riley’s blood on it was Jose Ibarra.

Since Riley’s murder, Ibarra’s immigration status has been repeatedly discussed, prompting concern about border security and spurring the issue of illegal immigration’s prominence in the 2024 presidential election. Ibarra and his brothers are Venezuelan nationals in the United States illegally. He was caught by border officials in September 2022 when crossing the border between Texas and Mexico but was released into the country by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Ibarra is also reportedly a member of the violent Venezuelan criminal organization Tren de Aragua, the same gang that reportedly took over an apartment complex in Colorado earlier this year.