ROANOKEÂ (WSLS 10) --- The death of 13-year-old Nicole Lovell has garnered media attention nationwide.
The Blacksburg teen's father, David Lovell, sat down with talk show host Dr. Phil McGraw Sunday in his Los Angeles, CA studio to talk about the case.
The Dr. Phil show provided a video clip from the episode, set to air Wednesday on WSLS 10.
In the clip, McGraw asks David Lovell about his daughter's "likely reaction at the time."
Lovell responded, " I bet she fought like a wildcat. She's my kid. The Keepers girl, in her mug shot, looks like she has a scar. I couldn't tell in court because she had her hair, you can see it in those pictures right there. You can see the scar going down her face."
What you see in her mug shot according to Commonwealth's Attorney Mary Pettitt, is not a scar, but a strand of hair. Pettitt said, after their arrest, both Natalie Keepers and David Eisenhauer "were subjected to a forensic exam to document any injuries, bruises or scratches."
"Any relevant results of those exams will be presented in court," Pettitt continued.
In an interview Monday, we asked McGraw about his interest in the case.
"Well Dawn, what got me interested was the social media aspect in the loss of life here," he said.
Prosecutors confirmed last week during Keepers' bail hearing, Lovell was active on social media and chat apps. Her last message was with an account belonging to Eisenhauer.
McGraw calls the tragedy a cautionary tale in which parents have to take charge of kids who have the knowledge to work their way around the internet and the apps they use.
"They've got the knowledge, but they don't have the wisdom. Parents, you don't have the knowledge, but you do have the wisdom and that's a great partnership to bring together. It's not an invasion of privacy. It's an assertion of parenting. You wouldn't let your kids walk down a dark alley alone, but believe me there are a lot of dark alleys on the Internet."
He recommends parents get on the apps their kids are on.
"You have to cross those boundaries. You have to get inside your child's boundaries and know what's going on and have an opportunity to intervene."
He explained, predators pay attention. They find out what music and movies the target population likes," McGraw said. "They learn their lingo and they take on these false fronts so they seem to fit in.
"If you can tell your children the tools that a predator will use to groom them and you can make them aware perhaps you inoculate them some. So I think you have to teach them the tools of the predator and to do that you have to know what they are. But then I think you have to shadow your child on the internet and know where they're going and who they're talking to," he said.
McGraw recommends parents look for whether or not the people their children are talking to are starting to progressively ask for more "real world identifying information."
"If somebody in the virtual world is trying to cross that boundary and barrier, the way they'll do that is they'll give their information because they're dealing on the principle of reciprocity. It's like, I'll give you my full name if you'll give me yours. I'll give you my cell number if you give me yours. I'll tell you where I live if you tell me where you live. Let's meet here. Let's meet there."
If they're progressively trying to tease that information out of a child, "that should look like an old Navy flagman out there waving flags. That person is trying to lure your child off of the computer and into the street. And that's where the crime happens," he said.
In their interview, McGraw said Lovell shared that he was aware that she was on social media in advance and said in November and December, they had become aware that she was having "inappropriate exchanges" on the Kik app.
"She was confronted about it, the phone was taken away but then she did get it back," McGraw explained. "So he now is saying, my gosh should I have done more, I should have done more. I should have intervened more strongly here."