Family, friends and classmates planned to gather Friday at a church outside Atlanta to say farewell to Laken Riley, the nursing student found slain after she went out for a morning jog on the University of Georgia campus.
A funeral service for 22-year-old Riley was set to follow a visitation Friday afternoon at Woodstock City Church in Cherokee County, where Riley lived before graduating from high school in Atlanta’s northern suburbs.
Riley was enrolled in the Augusta Medical College’s nursing program in Athens when police found her dead Feb. 22 on the neighboring University of Georgia campus. A friend called police after Riley left to go running and didn’t come home.
The killing shocked Riley’s fellow students in Athens, where more than 41,000 attend UGA and another 210 are enrolled in the medical program where Riley studied nursing. Police arrested a suspect, Jose Antonio Ibarra, on murder charges the day after Riley was slain in a forested area with trails for running and walking.
Riley “loved nursing and caring for others,” according to her obituary from Poole Funeral Home. She had remained active in the AXO sorority at UGA, where she studied before enrolling in nursing school.
