Lawyers for Ex-Virginia Tech Runner Charged With Murder of 13-Year-Old Girl Want Evidence Tossed
Lawyers for David Eisenhauer, the former Virginia Tech distance runner accused of murdering a 13-year-old girl, have asked a judge to throw out incriminating statements that he allegedly made to investigators because they claim it violated his rights, according to the Associated Press.
Eisenhauer is accused of taking Nicole Lovell into a wooded area and stabbing her to death. He later moved her body to Surry County, N.C. Co-defendant Natalie Keepers is charged with being an accessory before the fact to first-degree murder and concealing a body. She is slated to go to trial Feb. 5. She objected to how police questioned her and got a confession. Eisenhauer and Keepers were engineering students at Virginia Tech.
Court documents state that Eisenhauer met Lovell at a party and continued a relationship with her. He convinced her to climb out of her bedroom window at home and meet him before allegedly killing her. Lovell disappeared in January 2016. Police arrived at Eisenhauer's dorm room on Jan. 29, 2016 and brought him to the Blacksburg Police Department.
According to the Roanoke Times, Keepers told investigators that Eisenhauer was unsure whether he had sex with Lovell at the party because he blacked out after meeting her. Keepers said that Eisenhauer thought Lovell was pregnant.
The Roanoke Times reports that a new court filing states that police continued questioning Eisenhauer after he said. "I'm done. I'm calling a lawyer." Police had been questioning him for 50 minutes before he walked out of the interrogation room but was not permitted to leave the police station. Officers continued questioning him for four more hours.
Eisenhauer's motion requests for all of his statements to be thrown out because the police entered his room without a search warrant and anything said after Eisenhauer stated that he was finished and calling an attorney should be disregarded. The motions also ask for any cellphone messages or information be thrown out because he handed over his phone to a detective without a search warrant for it. The last part of the motions also requested that statements that Eisenhauer made to three jail informants be removed from evidence because the informants may have worked with police too much. The Times states that courts have held that informants cannot be used to get around Miranda requirements for interrogating suspects.
A trial is slated to begin Nov. 2. Eisenhauer faces charges of first-degree murder, abduction and concealing a body.
