Va Tech students held in death of ‘awesome little girl’

He is charged with first-degree murder and abduction in the death of 13-year-old Nicole Madison Lovell. She didn’t like going to school because girls called her fat and talked about the scars from her transplant, Weeks said.

Police allege that Eisenhauer used his relationship with the minor to abduct and kill her. Keepers is charged with helping Eisenhauer dispose of Lovell’s body, which was found just inside the North Carolina border on Saturday.

Virginia Tech student David E. Eisenhauer, 18, was charged January 30 with murder and felony abduction.

Police have not said how she was killed or released a motive for the slaying.

An autopsy was being performed Monday and the report was not expected until just before the next court hearing on March 28, the office of the prosecutor said.

Both appeared in a mostly empty courtroom wearing orange jumpsuits, with shackled hands and feet. She told Judge Robert Viar Jr. that she understood the charges against her and had retained counsel, attorney Kris Olin.

Principal James LeMon at Wylde Lake High School says David Eisenhauer was an excellent student-athlete who ran track, had many friends and wanted to be an engineer.

Chris Heydrick, who competed against Eisenhauer in high school, told The Baltimore Sun that Eisenhauer was “cocky” but “the dude was mentally tough”.

The arrest warrants for Keepers and Eisenhauer include a paragraph that reads “Was firearm used in the offense” – and a box is checked “No” on all four warrants. LeMon said the teen “fit into our school community very well”.

Apparently Nicole spent a lot of time online posting on social media, which is where police and her mother believe she met Eisenhauer.

Eisenhauer was arrested Saturday, hours before Nicole’s remains were found in Surry County, North Carolina, a two-hour drive from campus. Blacksburg police Chief Anthony Wilson told The Roanoke Times that Eisenhauer has not confessed to involvement in Lovell’s death and did not give police information that led to the discovery of her body.

The apartment is in a two-story, white-siding-clad building and situated amid a maze of mostly student housing roughly a half mile from Blacksburg’s Main Street, which takes you downtown and to Virginia Tech’s campus.

Nicole’s mother, Tammy Weeks, told The Washington Post (http://wapo.st/201JsDS) that her daughter had been bullied at school.

Even when she didn’t go to school, bullies kept harassing her online, Weeks said. Drake said she could not confirm that because of privacy laws, but she said the county’s schools have anti-bullying programs. “It got so bad I wouldn’t send her”.

Drake says Blacksburg Middle provided “safe spaces” for students around the building where they could deal with grief in peace.

Lovell went missing from her home in Blacksburg on Wednesday.

Lovell was described as “an awesome little girl” who had a tough life. She said she had retained a lawyer.

A number listed for Eisenhauer’s parents was busy Sunday. No one answered the phone at Keepers’ home in Laurel.

Contributors include Associated Press writers Juliet Linderman in Maryland, and Larry O’Dell and Alanna Durkin Richer in Richmond, Virginia.