In an interview aired Monday, Laken Riley’s father criticized the politicization of his daughter’s demise.
NBC News reports that Jason Riley feels that she is getting used politically. “She was much better than that. She should be raised up for the person that she is.”
The daddy of Laken Riley, a Georgia nursing scholar killed whereas she was jogging, is remembering her as a “strong person” who excelled in lecturers however fears her demise is being exploited as a political wedge that has “incited people” for the November election.
Whereas politicians have evoked her title at marketing campaign rallies, in speeches and in an eponymous immigration-related invoice, turning it into an election yr flash level after she was killed, police say, by a suspect who entered the U.S. illegally two years in the past, Jason Riley has taken the previous month following her demise to replicate.
“I wish I would have been there to protect her,” he mentioned in an interview that aired Monday on NBC’s “TODAY” present — the primary time he has spoken publicly since his daughter was killed. “I wish it would have been me.”
Riley was jogging early within the morning on the College of Georgia campus when she was attacked and killed by blunt force trauma, based on Jeff Clark, the College of Georgia Police Chief.
Laken Riley was murdered by an unlawful alien.
Her father is talking out.
She would nonetheless be right here if we had a safe border.
Should watch ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/tVuHXuewhJ
— Home Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) March 18, 2024
Laken Riley’s homicide intensified an already heated debate over failed and unenforced immigration insurance policies with the Biden administration, and the case gained additional consideration this month when Biden did not say her title appropriately throughout the State of the Union. Riley informed NBC these actions made coping with his daughter’s demise much more troublesome.
However in response to what Biden mentioned, Jason Riley feels overwhelmed over how politicized the circumstances surrounding his daughter’s demise have change into.
“I think it’s being used politically to get those votes,” Jason Riley mentioned. “It makes me angry. I feel like, you know, they’re just using my daughter’s name for that. And she was much better than that, and she should be raised up for the person that she is. She was an angel.”
“I’d rather her not be such a political, how you say — it started a storm in our country,” Jason Riley mentioned of his daughter’s demise, “and it’s incited a lot of people.”
Because of the divisiveness, he mentioned, “there’s people on both sides that have lashed out at our families,” referring to him and Riley’s mom.
Whereas he and her mom divorced when Riley was younger, he and his daughter remained shut, calling one another usually, he mentioned. She spoke about desirous to graduate from Augusta College’s nursing faculty and work at a youngsters’s hospital. She wrote down her objectives for the yr, which included happening a date after she had been such a “study bug,” her father mentioned.
Whereas Jason Riley helps President Donald Trump, he needs the demise of his daughter “did not become so political.” Nonetheless, it has led to discussions about learn how to safe the southern border and assist girls, together with those that are trafficked.
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