The father of Laken Riley, the Georgia nursing student killed while she was jogging,  broke down saying he wishes “it would have been me” in his first public comments since his daughter’s death last month.

“I wish I would have been there to protect her,” Jason Riley told NBC’s “TODAY” show in an interview that aired Monday.

The 22-year-old was out for a morning run last month when she was brutally murdered near the University of Georgia in Athens.

The suspect in her murder, Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26, illegally entered the US two years ago — turning her death during an election year into a political flash point, her father now says.