BUFORD, Ga. — The father of Laken Riley, a Georgia nursing student killed while she was jogging, is remembering her as a “strong person” who excelled in academics but fears her death is being exploited as a political wedge that has “incited people” for the November election.
While politicians have evoked her name at campaign rallies, in speeches and in an eponymous immigration-related bill, turning it into an election year flash point after she was killed, police say, by a suspect who entered the U.S. illegally two years ago, Jason Riley has taken the past month following her death to reflect.
“I wish I would have been there to protect her,” he said in an interview that aired Monday on NBC’s “TODAY” show — the first time he has spoken publicly since his daughter was killed. “I wish it would have been me.”
Laken Riley’s slaying has fueled the already heated debate over immigration policies during the Biden administration, and it drew further attention when President Joe Biden referred to her in an unscripted moment during his State of the Union address this month.
“I’d rather her not be such a political, how you say — it started a storm in our country,” Jason Riley said of his daughter’s death, “and it’s incited a lot of people.”
As a result of the divisiveness, he said, “there’s people on both sides that have lashed out at our families,” referring to him and Riley’s mother.
While he and her mother divorced when Riley was young, he and his daughter remained close, calling each other often, he said. She spoke about wanting to graduate from Augusta University’s nursing college and work at a children’s hospital. She wrote down her goals for the year, which included going on a date after she had been such a “study bug,” her father said.
She was so preoccupied with school, her sorority and church that the pair last spoke about two weeks before she died.
“It was really surreal. I just didn’t want to believe it — it’s still hard to believe,” Jason Riley said of…
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