2 Virginia Tech students arrested in connection with death of 13-year-old girl

(Image credit: Twitter.com/SeanJWelsh)

last updated 1 February 2016

Two Virginia Tech engineering students have been arrested and charged in connection with the abduction and murder of a 13-year-old girl from Blacksburg, Virginia.

Authorities arrested David Eisenhauer, 18, of Columbia, Maryland, at his dorm on Saturday. He was first charged with abduction, and hours later charged with first-degree murder after police found the remains of Nicole Madison Lovell on Route 89 in Surry County, North Carolina, The Washington Post reports. On Sunday, Natalie Marie Keepers, 19, of Laurel, Maryland, was arrested off campus on felony charges for allegedly assisting with disposal of the body and a misdemeanor for her alleged role as an accessory after the fact, police said. Blacksburg Police Lt. Mike Albert said Eisenhauer knew Lovell, and "used this relationship to his advantage to abduct the 13-year-old and then kill her."

Lovell went missing on Wednesday around midnight, and her mother, Tammy Weeks, told the Post she found a nightstand against her bedroom door and the window ajar. Lovell, the youngest of four children, survived a liver transplant, MRSA, and lymphoma when she was 5, and was bullied by classmates because of her transplant scars, Weeks said. Police told Weeks her daughter may have recently met Eisenhauer on social media, on some "off-the-wall site I never heard of." Both Eisenhauer and Keepers are being held without bond.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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