A former Virginia Tech student convicted of fatally stabbing a 13-year-old girl was sentenced Tuesday to 50 years in prison.
David Eisenhauer was an 18-year-old freshman engineering student when he developed a relationship with Nicole Lovell, a seventh-grader from Blacksburg, Virginia.
Prosecutor Mary Pettitt said Eisenhauer and Lovell communicated online for months before meeting at least once in person. Pettitt said they met again in January 2016, when Eisenhauer lured Lovell out of her family's apartment with the promise of a "secret date," then killed her because he was afraid she would expose their relationship.
Before the sentence was handed down by Judge Robert Turk, Eisenhauer apologized.
"I am sorry for the pain my actions have caused for Nicole Lovell and her family,'' he said.
Prosecutors asked for a life sentence, while Eisenhauer's lawyers asked for something within sentencing guidelines that call for a prison term of between about 24 years and nearly 40 years.
Natalie Keepers, a friend of Eisenhauer's whom prosecutors have identified as his accomplice, is scheduled to stand trial in September on charges of being an accessory before the fact and concealing a body. Prosecutors have said that Keepers told police Eisenhauer told her he feared Lovell could be pregnant. Keepers said Eisenhauer told her he may have had sex with Lovell at a party, but couldn't remember because he blacked out and later woke up in a ditch.
Local
Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia local news, events and information
Eisenhauer pleaded no contest to first-degree murder, abduction and concealing a body in Lovell's death.
Before Eisenhauer's sentence was imposed, Lovell's parents described how their daughter's killing has affected them.
Her father, David Lovell, said he's been diagnosed with severe depression and post-traumatic stress disorder since his daughter's death.
"There is nothing that will happen in this courtroom that will fix it," he said.
Lovell's mother, Tami Weeks-Dowdy, said she sees a grief counselor and still has trouble sleeping. She said she celebrated what would have been her daughter's 16th birthday last month at her gravesite.
Eisenhauer's lawyers called two teachers and a former classmate of his from Yakima, Washington, where he lived before moving to Columbia, Maryland, with his family.
Both teachers from the Riverside Christian School said he was a smart and kind student, but appeared to have trouble following social cues.
Kathryn Anne Stoothoff, who taught Eisenhauer in a 10th-grade English class and a Bible class, said he was bright, but "needed clear rules to be successful." She said he would "follow someone off a cliff if they convinced him it was the right thing to do."
Lovell's body was found just over the state line in North Carolina. A medical examiner testified that she had 14 stab wounds, including a lethal wound to her neck.
