EXCLUSIVE: Laken Riley, the 22-year-old Georgia nursing student found dead by police Thursday after she failed to return from her morning jog, was an avid runner who had dedicated her life to becoming a nurse and helping others, according to her friend and former roommate.
Bianca Tiller, 21, lived with Riley during their freshman year at the University of Georgia, she told Fox News Digital.
Riley rarely missed her morning exercise, Tiller said, and she tracked her routes with an Apple Watch.
UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA POLICE QUESTIONING ‘PERSON OF INTEREST’ IN LAKEN RILEY HOMICIDE
After she failed to return from a morning run Thursday, another friend grew concerned and called UGA Police around noon. Within roughly 30 minutes, campus police found her near where she’d been jogging through the campus intramural fields with “visible injuries.”
They launched a homicide investigation and were questioning a person of interest 24 hours later. By Friday evening, UGA Police announced murder charges against a 26-year-old suspect, Jose Antonio Ibarra, who had no known connection to the victim and is not a U.S. citizen.
UGA Police Chief Jeffrey L. Clark called it a “crime of opportunity.” Riley was known to go for regular morning runs.
“She would go on runs every single day, even when we were freshmen,” Tiller said. “Not a day would go by where she wouldn’t go on her runs, and if she missed a day, which was very rare, she would just get so hard on herself about it.”
GEORGIA NURSING STUDENT FOUND DEAD ON UGA CAMPUS IDENTIFIED AS LAKEN RILEY
“I just want to really say that she was such an…
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