Virginia Tech students charged in death of 13-year-old girl

Two Virginia Tech engineering students were in
custody on Sunday, one charged with abducting
and killing a 13-year-old girl and the other
accused of helping to dispose of the teenager's
body, police said.
The arrests came on Saturday after police,
following a four-day search, found the remains of
Nicole Lovell in North Carolina, about 90 miles
(145 km) south of Blacksburg, Virginia, where her
home and the university are located.
Lovell had been missing from her family's home
since Wednesday. A family member told the
Roanoke Times it appeared she had climbed out
of a first-floor window.
It was not immediately clear how she crossed
paths with David Eisenhauer, 18, a freshman from
Columbia, Maryland, and member of the
university's cross-county team.
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. Eisenhauer took
advantage of that relationship to abduct and kill
Lovell, they said in a statement.
Police have not said how Lovell died.
Eisenhauer was arrested at his campus residence
on Saturday, first charged with abduction and
then accused of murder after Lovell's remains
were discovered near a highway in Surry County,
North Carolina.
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.
Natalie Marie Keepers, 19, a sophomore at
Virginia Tech from Laurel, Maryland, was arrested
on Sunday and charged with improper disposal of
a dead body and accessory after the fact in the
commission of a felony.
"I'm so in shock I know nothing more to
say," the victim's father, David Lovell, said
on Facebook. "I'm broken!"
Family members had pleaded for Nicole Lovell's
return, saying she was without the prescription
medicine she needed daily after undergoing a liver
transplant.
Authorities said they were working to piece
together the events leading to Lovell's death.
A Virginia Tech spokeswoman would not
comment on the enrollment status of Eisenhauer
and Keepers, but the university said in a
statement it had the authority to suspend
students immediately on an interim basis in the
case of a felony arrest.
Hundreds of students in the university's Corps of
Cadets, along with students and researchers
using drones, assisted in the search for Lovell, the
school said.