Local students react to UGA student homicide
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (WDEF) – The University of Georgia campus in Athens is mourning after a nursing student and former UGA graduate was found dead on Thursday.
After Thursday’s tragic events at UGA, we asked students here at UTC how they feel about their safety.
One student, Taylynn Boggs, said, “It just depends like what time of day it is. If it’s like during the day, there’s all kinds of UTC police out and it’s not bad. But then coming home from the library at night or something, it feels a little unsafe you know?”
Laken Riley, the woman killed while jogging on UGA’s campus Thursday. (From: Augusta College of Nursing)
The circumstances behind the death of 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley in Athens have students concerned.
She was on a morning jog according to her roommate, who called police after she didn’t return.
UGA Police said they found her body shortly thereafter in the middle of the day.
Michael Allred, a student, said, “That’s just crazy, it could happen to anybody.”
Another student, Kennedy Stanley, says she hasn’t felt unsafe but has had friends who have.
She said, “They’ve immediately called our on-campus police that are here for us, and they came right away because they are just here waiting around.”
Nick: Other students we talked also said that they believe UTC is actively taking safety seriously.
Boggs said, “For me, there is only so much you can do in this time, but they always implement things, they always let us know if there’s a threat or not or something like that.”
Allred said, “There’s cops patrolling all the, like, UTC Campus Police they’re always patrolling, doing their rounds.”
Stanley said, “We all have student IDs, you can’t really get into anywhere without IDs.”
They do say given Riley was killed during the day, they will be more cautious.
Stanley said, “It’s not just at night, you have people warning you about the nighttime, but it can also happen in the daylight.”
It is worth noting for UTC families and students that UTC Police does release messages via phone, email, and social media among other methods.
