David Eisenhauer was an eighteen year old that would murder a thirteen year old girl in Virginia
According to court documents David Eisenhauer thought that he had got thirteen year old Nicole Lovell pregnant. He would tell the arresting officers that he had drank a lot and blacked out so could not remember whether or not he had sex with Nicole. Regardless David would stab Nicole repeatedly causing her death. The body of Nicole Lovell would be found days later
David Eisenhauer would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to fifty years in prison
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A former student and track star at Yakima’s Riverside Christian School who was 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-grade student from Blacksburg, Va.
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 Nicole Lovell and her family. It is my deepest regret, and I’m aware my actions have serious consequences. Nothing can ever undo what was done, and for that I’m deeply, sincerely and forever sorry,” 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.
Eisenhauer pleaded no contest to first-degree murder, abduction and concealing a body in Lovell’s death.
Before the 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, where he lived before moving to Columbia, Md., with his family.
Both teachers from 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.”
“David was a very fine student and a very bright mind, and he needed very clear rules to be successful,” she said. “Outside of that clear structured environment, David found it difficult to know what to do. He didn’t pick up on the normal social cues that everyone else just seemed to know.”
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. Lovell was not pregnant.