Blacksburg murder connected to 2 VA Tech students

David Eisenhauer, 18, a Virginia Tech student from Columbia, Maryland, was arrested Saturday and charged with first-degree murder and abduction.

But police in Blacksburg, about 40 miles (64 km) west of Roanoke, Virginia, said investigators had determined the two teens became acquainted before her disappearance.

A second Virginia Tech student has been arrested in the death of a 13-year-old girl who disappeared from her Blacksburg, Virginia home last week.

Blacksburg police Chief Anthony Wilson told The Roanoke Times that Eisenhauer has not confessed and did not provide information that led to the body.

A star Maryland high school athlete before coming to Virginia Tech, Eisenhauer was named the Howard County Times/Columbia Flier Indoor Track Athlete of the year, according to a 2015 profile in the Baltimore Sun.

“I’m scared to death”, her father, David Lovell, told CNN affiliate WDBJ-TV before she was found. However, they were terribly concerned about her health, because she was the recipient of a liver transplant.

“We had no reason to think he would be unsuccessful in his goals, because he was very focused”, said Principal James LeMon at Wilde Lake High School, where Eisenhauer graduated past year. “And as the mayor, while I know that Blacksburg is a safe community, on occasion the town and the Virginia Tech community have suffered inexplicable tragedies such as this”.

“Just tragic. It’s hard to understand those things”, said the retired coach, “Everybody will be affected in some way and the only thing we can do is be supportive to the students and the staff there”. According to her family, she disappeared after placing a dresser in front of her bedroom door and climbing out of a window, the Associated Press reported. Her LinkedIn profile says she interned with NASA at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., in 2014. “I will not stop until I reach my peak performance”. “People won’t even steal from other rooms here”. Nicole’s body has been taken to a medical examiner’s office for an autopsy.

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.

Speaking on behalf of the entire school community, Virginia Tech president Tim Sands offered Nicole’s family and friends condolences.

Already on Sunday, Blacksburg police arrested Davis Eisenhauser, 18, a freshman at Virginia Tech.

The remains of the girl were discovered on the Route 89, along the Virginia line in Blacksburg’s Surry County.