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| Tammy Weeks holds one of her slain daughter's stuffed pandas during a news conference in Blacksburg, Va., on Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2016. Weeks says her 13-year-old daughter, Nicole Lovell, fought health problems all her life and had dreams of singing on "American Idol." |
BLACKSBURG,
Va. (AP) -- A 13-year-old girl who vanished from her bedroom was
stabbed to death by a Virginia Tech student, and another freshman
already charged with hiding the body was more deeply involved,
authorities said Tuesday. A neighbor said the seventh-grader told
friends she would sneak out to meet her "boyfriend" David, an
18-year-old she met online through the Kik messaging app.
Nicole
Madison Lovell was killed Wednesday, the same day she vanished, by
David Eisenhauer, a freshman at Virginia Tech now jailed on charges of
kidnapping and murder, Commonwealth's Attorney Mary Pettitt said
Tuesday.
The prosecutor also announced that
Eisenhauer's classmate, Natalie Keepers, will face a more serious charge
of being an accessory "before the fact" to first-degree murder, in
addition to helping to dispose of the body. The new charge could mean a
life sentence if convicted.
Eisenhauer said "I believe the truth will set me free" after he was arrested on Saturday, a police document says.
Nicole's
mother discovered her missing last Wednesday morning, setting off an
intense hunt for the girl, who suffered from bullying at school and
online over her weight and a tracheotomy scar, and needed daily
medication after surviving a liver transplant, lymphoma and a
drug-resistant bacterial infection as a 5-year-old.
Police
quickly zeroed in on Eisenhauer, and then found Nicole's body on
Saturday, hidden off a North Carolina road, two hours south of campus.
Stacy
Snider, a neighbor whose 8-year-old twins played with Nicole, told The
Associated Press that before she vanished, Nicole showed her girls
Eisenhauer's picture along with a thread of texts they had shared and
said she would be sneaking out to meet him.
"She
was talking about this boyfriend she had that was 18 and went to
college, and his name was David. And showed some text messages off of a
Kik and pictures. And that's what the girls told the police officers
when they asked."
Snider said she learned all
this from her girls only after Nicole vanished. "I would have told her
mother. But we didn't know nothing about it until she came up missing,
unfortunately," she said.
Her fate devastated
her mother, Tammy Weeks, who also spoke at Tuesday's news conference,
describing the health problems her daughter battled and the joys in her
short life.
"Her favorite color was blue.
Nicole was a very lovable person. Nicole touched many people throughout
her short life," Weeks read from a statement before her sobs became
uncontrollable and she was ushered away.
Blacksburg
police said they have evidence showing Eisenhauer knew the girl before
she disappeared Wednesday, but provided no more details.
"Eisenhauer
used this relationship to his advantage to abduct the 13-year-old and
then kill her. Keepers helped Eisenhauer dispose of Nicole's body," a
police statement said.
Kik Interactive, based
in Ontario, Canada, was "active in helping the FBI carry out their
investigation," spokesman Rod McLeod said.
Also,
at Kik's request, Apple stopped advertising Kik Messenger as
appropriate for kids 9 and older on its iTunes store on Monday. "Yes, we
did recently ask Apple to change our rating to 12+. This more closely
matches the age (13) in our TOS (terms of service)," McLeod told the AP.
Kik,
along with Instagram and Snapchat, are particularly popular with
younger teens, and it's impossible to keep underage users from signing
up. Even kids whose parents closely monitor their activity on sites such
as Facebook often use smartphones with other social media where
predators lurk, said Adam Lee, special agent in charge of the FBI in
Richmond.
"Kids are crafty," Lee said. "They
will have one account parents have access to, and half a dozen they
shield from their parents' view."
David
Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at
the University of New Hampshire, agreed that parental oversight is a
good thing, but cautioned against placing too much blame on technology.
"Although
there has been an increase in crimes that have some social
media-related nexus to them, the overall level of crime victimization -
including sexual assaults and kidnapping and even peer bullying - has
declined," Finkelhor said. "So it's a complicated picture."
Teens
who are vulnerable online would be vulnerable in other situations as
well, Finkelhor added, especially those who are "socially isolated or
dealing with some emotional problem, not well supervised, suffering
rejection by families or peers. They are looking for support, someone
who can give them affirmation."
