In the summer of 2015, the community of Leesburg, Georgia, was unsettled by the death of Dr. Lisa Marie Riley, a 34-year-old female emergency physician at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital. On the morning of July 10, 2015, her husband, Yathomas Riley, placed a 911 call reporting that he had just returned from out of town to find his wife in a room in their Northampton Road home, bleeding. In the audio from the call, Yathomas Riley is heard telling the dispatcher, 'she shot herself.'
When emergency services arrived, they found Lisa Riley deceased from a gunshot wound to the head.
The initial investigation into what was first reported as a potential suicide quickly shifted. While at the scene, investigators discovered as many as six guns in the residence, leading to the immediate arrest of Yathomas Riley on an unrelated charge of violating the terms of a previous bond. This earlier bond was related to a domestic dispute in June of that year, where he had been charged with three counts of aggravated assault for allegedly threatening his wife with a handgun. A condition of that bond prohibited him from being in a home with firearms. He was taken into custody at the Lee County Jail.
As the Georgia Bureau of Investigation continued their extensive inquiry into Lisa Riley's death, the focus remained on her husband. Ten days after her body was found, on July 20, 2015, arrest warrants were issued for Yathomas Riley, charging him with Murder, Felony Murder, and Aggravated Assault in connection with his wife's death. An autopsy confirmed that the cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head, and the information gathered from the post-mortem examination contributed to the decision to charge him. The following day, Yathomas Riley had his first appearance in Lee County Magistrate Court on these new charges, where the judge deemed the matter of his previous bond revocation 'moot' in the face of the murder allegations. He was advised of his rights and indicated that he would hire an attorney to represent him.
