Suspect accused of killing Laken Riley waives jury in murder trial
Courtesy of Augusta University
(ATHENS, Ga.) — The suspect accused of killing 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley on the University of Georgia’s campus has waived his right to a jury trial.
The judge granted the defense’s motion for a bench trial for the suspect, Jose Ibarra, during a hearing in Athens-Clarke County on Tuesday.
The bench trial is scheduled to begin on Friday before Judge H. Patrick Haggard, who will render a verdict in the case.
Jury selection had been scheduled to start in the case on Wednesday.
When asked by Haggard if he understood the waiver of jury trial, and if it was “freely, knowingly and intelligently signed and considered,” Ibarra said yes.
The defense also said they agree with their client’s decision to waive a jury trial, and confirmed that the form had been translated appropriately into Spanish by a court interpreter for Ibarra.
Last month, Haggard denied the defense’s motion for a change of venue in the high-profile case.
Riley, a student at Augusta University, was found dead in a wooded area on the Athens campus on Feb. 22 after she didn’t return from a run. The indictment alleges Ibarra killed her by “inflicting blunt force trauma to her head and by asphyxiating her” and seriously disfigured her head by striking her “multiple times” with a rock.
Additional charges in the 10-count indictment include aggravated battery, kidnapping with bodily injury, aggravated assault with intent to rape, obstructing or hindering a person making an emergency telephone call and tampering with evidence. The latter charge alleged that he “knowingly concealed” evidence — a jacket and gloves — involving the offense of malice murder.
He was also charged with a peeping tom offense. The indictment alleges that on the same day as Riley’s murder, he spied through the window of a different person who lived in an apartment on campus. The judge last month also denied a motion seeking to sever that charge from the case.
Ibarra was denied bond following his arrest on Feb. 23 and is being held at the Clarke County Jail.
Police have said they do not believe Ibarra — a migrant from Venezuela who officials said illegally entered the U.S. in 2022 — knew Riley and that this was a “crime of opportunity.” Her death has become a rallying cry for immigration reform from many conservatives, including now President-elect Donald Trump.
(NEW YORK) — Thunderstorms are in the forecast Saturday across parts of the central United States as a summer-like pattern continues to deliver hot temperatures and scattered severe weather.
The highest risk for severe weather on Saturday is along the New Mexico-Texas border, with damaging winds, large hail and a few tornadoes possible between Albuquerque and Amarillo. A Flood Watch has been issued for parts of New Mexico and the Texas panhandle.
There is another area extending from Kansas to Wisconsin that may be producing strong to severe thunderstorms later, with damaging winds being the main threat. Flash flooding could be an issue as well, with 1″-3″ of rain across parts of the Midwest over the next 2 days.
Offshore storm affecting Northeast
A pesky storm system has parked itself off the coast of eastern Massachusetts, drenching Cape Cod and Nantucket with up to 4 inches of rain during the last few days.
Coastal Flood Alerts are in effect for several locations along the east coast, due to the combination of astronomical high tide and the rough surf from this offshore storm.
Minor coastal flooding of 1 to 2 feet is possible this weekend during high tide from the Mid-Atlantic into the Northeast. The storm will slowly pull away by early next week.
In the tropics
The chances for our next tropical system in the Gulf of Mexico are increasing, with a 60% likelihood for development as we head through next week.
The potential storm hasn’t even formed yet, but a storm is expected to take shape around the middle or end of next week, bringing a heavy rain threat to the Gulf Coast.
It is still far too early to determine potential impacts, but residents along the Gulf Coast should be monitoring this over the next several days.
(BELLEVUE, Wash.) — Two people have been killed by falling trees in Washington state as a powerful storm hits the Pacific Northwest.
In Bellevue, a tree fell into a home, hitting and killing a woman while she was in the shower Tuesday night, Bellevue fire officials said.
In Lynwood, a woman in her 50s was killed when a tree fell on a homeless encampment, officials said.
More than 500,000 customers are without power in Washington state on Wednesday.
The storm exploded into a bomb cyclone off the coast, near Vancouver Island, Canada, where winds gusted near 101 mph.
A bomb cyclone means the pressure in the center of the storm drops 24 millibars within 24 hours.
Wind gusts reached 50 to 84 mph from Northern California to Washington.
As the storm sits and spins over the ocean this week, it will help to push a plume of Pacific moisture called an atmospheric river into Oregon and Northern California.
Alerts are in effect through Friday for flooding, snow, avalanches and high winds.
Some places could see more than 1 foot of rain this week. A flood watch has been issued in Northern California.
(WASHINGTON) — A piece of the Titan’s carbon-fiber hull recovered after the submersible’s deadly catastrophic implosion showed “anomalies,” a National Transportation Safety Board engineer said Wednesday during a weekslong hearing on the incident.
Don Kramer, the acting chief of the NTSB’s materials laboratory, testified during the U.S. Coast Guard’s hearing into the June 2023 implosion of the OceanGate submersible while on a deep-sea dive to the Titanic shipwreck.
Kramer said his team examined material from the manufacturing of the hull and found “several anomalies within the composite and the adhesive joints, including waviness, wrinkles, porosity and voids.”
They also examined a piece of the hull recovered from the ocean floor and found similar anomalies, including “waviness and wrinkles within the hull layers” and voids within the adhesive that joined the layers, he said. The recovered hull also showed “features consistent with rubbing damage at one of those adhesive joints.”
Kramer said the Titan debris on the ocean floor showed that the hull “encountered a significant amount of delamination” — or separating into layers — most of which was within or adjacent to co-bonded adhesive interfaces.
Asked by OceanGate’s counsel whether any of the delaminations, voids or rubbing damage could have been present before the implosion, as opposed to being caused by the implosion, Kramer said he is not offering analysis as to when they occurred.
Further asked by OceanGate’s counsel whether any of the issues he observed could have caused the implosion, Kramer said that is “still subject to our own internal analysis at this point.”
Strain response after loud bang on dive 80
Kramer also discussed the loud bang passengers heard as the Titan ascended during a dive that occurred a year before the implosion, on July 15, 2022 — referred to as dive 80 — which has been referenced throughout the two-week hearing. The bang was also detected by the Titan’s real-time monitoring system, which had sensors to detect acoustic events, as well as multiple strain gages to monitor mechanical strain, he said.
Kramer said his team determined that the hull’s strain response changed after this loud bang incident in subsequent dives in 2022. He said the strain gage data showed a change in the strain in the hull for four of the eight gages.
“Those changes persisted from dive to dive,” he said.
There was no difference when comparing the strain response to a dive prior to dive 80, Kramer said.
No strain data is available for dives conducted in 2023, according to Kramer.
Phil Brooks, OceanGate’s former engineering director, testified on Monday that following the loud bang on dive 80, the strain gage data showed a minor “shift,” though they did not see “any further shifts in strain data” on subsequent dives in 2022. Nothing “really seemed out of the ordinary,” and OceanGate co-founder and CEO Stockton Rush made the decision to continue dives, Brooks said.
Asked how his team arrived at its determination on the change in strain response based on the graphs of the available data, Kramer said, “I guess it’s a matter of opinion as to whether one can discern the changes in strain output.”
Brooks said Rush theorized that the loud bang was caused by the frame “readjusting back to its original shape” as it returned to the surface.
Kramer noted that the NTSB’s investigation is still ongoing, and the scope of his presentation was therefore limited.
Marine Technology Society draft letter to Rush
William Kohnen, the CEO and founder of submersible maker Hydrospace Group, said during his testimony on Wednesday that he would not have made a carbon-fiber hull. He said it would cost “too much money” and “is really, really difficult.”
The investigators asked Kohnen about a draft Marine Technology Society letter he wrote in March 2018 to Rush based on public safety concerns raised during a conference.
“This was considered an issue of where we as consensus, as professionals in this industry, had significant concerns — not on one particular thing, but the overall approach of neglecting the years of experience and tradition and diligence that we applied,” he said.
Kohnen said the letter was signed by around 40 members and went through other drafts, though the Marine Technology Society board never approved sending it to Rush on behalf of the society. Rush still managed to get a copy of the original draft letter, which Kohnen said they discussed over the phone.
During the call, Kohnen said he told Rush he found the language on OceanGate’s website confusing for the general public not familiar with submersibles and that they were “highly inferring” the experimental sub was classed, when that wasn’t the case. He said the website was subsequently updated.
Kohnen stressed the importance of classification and regulations to build safe submersibles.
“We have a record of 50 years without a single fatality until Titan,” he said. “It does indicate the power of our regulation.”
OceanGate suspended all exploration and commercial operations after the deadly implosion, which killed five people, including Rush.
The hearing on the incident is scheduled to run through Friday.
The main purpose of the hearing is to uncover the facts related to the implosion and to make recommendations, the Coast Guard said.
