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20 Ekim 2015 Salı
David Eisenhauer (left), 18, and Natalie Marie Keepers. 19, were freshmen studying engineering at Virginia Tech.
By T. Rees Shapiro and DeNeen L. Brown WASHINGTON POST
BLACKSBURG, Va. — Two Virginia Tech students have been charged in the death of a 13-year-old Blacksburg girl who vanished from her bedroom last week, sparking a four-day search.
David Eisenhauer, 18, of Columbia, Md., was charged Saturday with first-degree murder and abduction, Blacksburg police said.
Virginia State Police found the remains of Nicole Madison Lovell on a highway in Surry County, N.C., along the Virginia state line.
On Sunday, Blacksburg Police Lieutenant Mike Albert announced that Natalie Marie Keepers, 19, of Laurel, Md., was arrested on charges of helping to dispose of Nicole’s remains. Albert said Keepers, who was arrested off campus, also was charged with being an accessory in the killing.
Albert said police have determined that Eisenhauer knew Nicole but declined to comment on the nature of their relationship.
Eisenhauer and Keepers, who are both general engineering students at Virginia Tech, are being held without bond at the Montgomery County, Va., jail.
Police said the remains were taken to the state medical examiner’s office in Roanoke overnight, for an autopsy.
Eisenhauer was arrested without incident early Saturday at his residence in Blacksburg, police said.
“This has been an extremely fast investigation, Blacksburg Police Chief Anthony Wilson said, adding the investigators are still collecting evidence and trying to determine the events that led to the death.
Nicole was reported missing Wednesday and was last seen in Blacksburg between midnight and 7 a.m., police said.
Nicole’s mother, Tammy Weeks, said in an interview Sunday that police came to her house about 2 p.m. Saturday to tell her that her daughter’s body had been found. “I’m shocked,” said Weeks, 43, a cashier at a local department store. “I’m hurt. It’s unbelievable.”
Weeks said Nicole had survived a liver transplant, MRSA, and lymphoma when she was 5. “God got her through all that, and she fought through all that, and he took her life,” she said.
Nicole’s mother found a nightstand against the girl’s bedroom door Wednesday, and her family thinks she climbed out a window.
“She picked it up and put it against the door,” Weeks said. “The window was cracked when I went in.”
Nicole, who was the youngest of three children, was in seventh grade at Blacksburg Middle School.
“She was a typical student,” but she didn’t like going to school because she was bullied, Weeks said. “She was telling me that girls were saying she was fat and talking about her scars from her transplant.”
Nicole often cried to stay home from school, her mother said. “We discussed it with teachers, but it got worse. It got so bad I wouldn’t send her.”
But the bullying, her mother said, continued online. “They can’t control those kids on social media,” Weeks said.
Weeks said she was told her daughter met Eisenhauer online a few weeks ago. “That’s all I know,” she said. “It was some off-the-wall site I never heard of.”
Nicole, who was born in Radford, loved pandas, and she decorated her room with the stuffed bears and also pillows of the “Minions” characters.
She wanted to be on “American Idol” when she got older. “She loved to sing and dance,” Weeks said.
Several agencies are assisting Blacksburg police in the investigation, including the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, the FBI office in Charlotte, and the North Carolina medical examiner.
Blacksburg police said that new developments in the inquiry late Friday had led to Eisenhauer and to his arrest Saturday at his residence on campus. The developments were unspecified, and it was also unknown what led searchers to the body.
The Roanoke Times quoted police as saying Eisenhauer did not give police information that led to her discovery.
Eisenhauer, a freshman engineering major at the college, was a track and field star at Wilde Lake High School in Howard County, Md.
He was a three-time state champion in track, including the Class 3A Maryland title for the 3,200-meter race, which he won in 2014.
Eisenhauer also competed in cross country, finishing second in the state both his junior and senior years.
Joe Keating, who was Eisenhauer’s cocaptain on the Wilde Lake cross-country team, said members of the track team were dismayed to hear the news of his arrest. “We’re all just in utter shock,” he said.
Eric Smart, who was also on the cross-country team, said his former teammate was focused on academics and his career and said he didn’t seem violent.
According to a Facebook page and LinkedIn profile thought to belong to Keepers, she is a freshman engineering student who wanted to work in aerospace engineering.Her LinkedIn profile says she interned with NASA at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., in 2014.
In a statement, Virginia Tech said the entire school community extended its support to the family and friends of the missing girl. The university said that hundreds of students in the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets as well as students and researchers conducting drone research assisted in the search for Nicole.
Virginia Tech president Tim Sands said the case left the school community “in a state of shock and sadness.”
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