‘I feel like it’s tainted’: Killing shatters security for UGA students

ATHENS, Ga. - A slaying at the University of Georgia left students shaken as they struggled to understand a peer’s death on what had always seemed like a calm and peaceful campus.

News of 22-year-old Laken Riley’s death came as students were already reeling from another unrelated death on campus.

Although Riley was a student at the Augusta University College of Nursing’s Athens campus, she was killed on the UGA grounds. Her body was found Thursday in a wooded area near Lake Herrick in what authorities say is the first homicide on campus in two decades.

By just after 5 p.m. Friday, authorities said they had a suspect in custody.

Still, the sense of security had already been broken.

“It’s really beautiful and peaceful, and now I feel like it’s tainted,” UGA student Alena Wiggins said. “It’s like, scary, a little bit.”

“I know the weather’s nicer than what it was yesterday, but it feels more heavy-hearted, like the air is not as fluid, there’s not as much conversation,” said Ulysses Abundez.

Freshman business major Paige Soskel was having coffee Friday with fellow freshman Julia Lambert in downtown Athens, where some people were out enjoying sunny weather.

Soskel said she was stunned that Riley was killed during the day.

“It was kind of just surreal to think that we have friends in the sorority that she was in. And just to think that it’s somebody that people we know actually know is just scary — that it could be anyone.”

She said she already tries to let others know where she is, including using an online tracking service. But now she’s considering further precautions. Her father sent her pepper spray, she said.

Nate Stein, who graduated in December with a biomedical engineering degree said he’s likely to be “on edge for a little bit.” His roommate is a frequent runner and they often go to the area around the lake for exercise, he said.

“I used to walk there every morning too and I mean, it just feels like a very safe space,” Stein said “It’s on campus so, like I said, it doesn’t really feel like it would ever be unsafe at all.”

UGA also saw another unrelated death on the campus just hours before Riley’s. A student died Wednesday night in Brumby Hall, UGA said in a statement, calling this a “traumatic time for our university.”

The university did not say how the student died, but the student’s high school alma mater said the death was by suicide.

What we know

• On Thursday, a person called UGA police around noon after their friend didn’t return from a morning run at the school’s intramural fields. Police found Riley’s body in a wooded area behind Lake Herrick with “visible injuries,” and she was pronounced dead at the scene.
• The coroner’s office has identified the victim as 22-year-old Laken Hope Riley. Augusta University said she was one of its students at the school’s College of Nursing campus in Athens.
• Foul play is suspected, police said.
• The death is the first homicide on campus in at least 20 years, UGA Police Chief Jeffery Clark said.
• UGA police are working with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Athens-Clarke County Police Department to investigate the incident.
• All classes at UGA were canceled until Monday. The Augusta University College of Nursing also canceled classes on Friday.
• Police ask anyone with information about the incident to call 706-542-2200.

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