Virginia prosecutor says teen stabbed in case linked to students
By Colleen Jenkins
(Reuters) - The mother of a 13-year-old girl whose abduction and fatal stabbing have been tied to two Virginia Tech students cried on Tuesday as she recalled her daughter's battle against multiple childhood illnesses and love of dance, music and pandas.
Tammy Weeks shed no new light on how the first-year engineering students charged in daughter Nicole Lovell's death might have met the teen who lived near the university campus in Blacksburg, Virginia.
Instead, Weeks spoke of a girl who survived a liver transplant and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and dreamed of being on the television show "American Idol."
"Nicole was a very lovable person," Weeks told reporters at a news conference in Blacksburg, before hurrying away in tears.
Preliminary autopsy results indicate Lovell was stabbed to death, Montgomery County prosecutor Mary Pettitt said. Authorities believe Lovell died on or about Jan. 27, the same day she went missing.
After a four-day search, her remains were found about 90 miles away in a heavily wooded, rural area in North Carolina, officials said.
David Eisenhauer, 18, a member of Virginia Tech's cross country team, is charged with first-degree murder and abduction and faces a possible life sentence if convicted.
A fellow student, Natalie Keepers, 19, who was accused of helping to dispose of Lovell's body, will now face a charge of being an accessory before the fact of a first-degree murder, Pettitt said.
That charge substantially increases her maximum punishment from five years in prison to 20 years to life.
Keepers earlier was charged with transporting or concealing a dead body and being an accessory after the fact.
Attorneys for Eisenhauer and Keepers have not commented. Neither have the two students, who remain jailed, though police said Eisenhauer told them, "I believe the truth can set me free." There was no context given for the statement or indication about what he meant.
Weeks has said her daughter may have met Eisenhauer on social media. Police said he took advantage of a prior connection with Lovell to kidnap and kill her but have declined to give more details.
Lovell's funeral service and burial will be held on Thursday, police said.
(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins in Winston-Salem, N.C.; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
