WASHINGTON — The father of Nicole Lovell, the 13-year-old Blacksburg, Virginia, girl who was found dead last month in North Carolina, said in an interview that the girl’s phone had been taken away because of inappropriate social-media use, but that she got it back.
In an appearance on the “Dr. Phil” show, David Lovell says that he and the girl’s mother found out around Christmastime that “Nicole had been on social media talking to inappropriate people. For a 13-year-old little girl, I thought some of the things that were said were inappropriate — from my daughter.”
Lovell told Dr. Phil that his older daughter, who lives in Ohio, told him that she had “dug around” in some of Nicole’s social media accounts, sending screenshots to her father to warn him of Nicole’s activity.
He said the accounts indicated his daughter was “talking to older guys, which — you could tell these older guys had fake profiles. They were pretending to be young guys.”
Lovell last saw Nicole last Dec. 19, and says that when she was reported missing Jan. 27, he immediately sensed that her social-media use had something to do with her disappearance.
“For my daughter to just run away, that’s not my daughter,” he says.
TWO VIRGINIA TECH STUDENTS — David Eisenhauer, 18, and Natalie Keepers, 19 — have been charged in her death. Reports indicate that Nicole considered Eisenhauer her boyfriend, The Associated Press says. ABC News reports that a source close to the investigation characterized their relationship as “inappropriate.”
“[Were they] girlfriend/boyfriend, she found out and killed my daughter? I don’t know,” Lovell told Dr. Phil. “That’s one [theory]. Were Nicole and this boy having some sort of relationship, some sort of talk, some sort of contact? My daughter Nicole wanted to report it or something to that effect, and they killed her for that? I don’t know …
“There are so many unanswered questions right now that I don’t want to speculate too much because then I’m just going to drive myself crazy.”
Referring to the possibility of an inappropriate relationship, Lovell told Dr. Phil, “No one has told me whether it happened,” before thinking it over for a moment and adding, “Probably.”
He later said, “She would not have had any contact — with any older guys, especially, without social media.”
He says his mission is to educate parents about the kind of inappropriate contacts that can happen with young teenagers over social media.
“To heck with ‘the dad that lost his daughter’ — that’s not the point,” he said. “I want to get out the word for the next little girl that might get in this situation, or the next dad that might lose his daughter. Let’s shut this [expletive] down so it [doesn’t] happen again.”
