AUBURN, Ala. — A man charged with killing an Auburn University student told police he tried to rape her before he shot her, according to documents read in court Monday as several thousand of her peers gathered for a memorial service. Lauren Burk, 18, a freshman from Marietta, Ga., was found on a roadside about 5 miles from the university; her car was later found ablaze in a campus parking lot.
The documents read in court, sworn to by a police detective, said suspect Courtney Lockhart, 23, described verbally and in writing how he abducted Burk from the university, robbed her, drove her around, told her to take her clothes off and shot her with a handgun. He also described driving the car back to campus and setting it on fire.
His attorneys, including Joel Collins, could not be reached for comment after business hours Monday.
Lockhart served with the Army in Iraq in 2004 and 2005 and was court-martialed, sentenced to confinement and given a bad-conduct discharge in December 2006 for charges including assault, military officials have said.
Also Monday, police in North Carolina investigating the slaying of the student- body president of the University of North Carolina focused on a suspect pictured in several surveillance photos using Eve Carson’s ATM card.
Carson, 22, of Athens, Ga., was found last week on a street about a mile from campus. She had been shot several times. Her car was found the next day a few blocks from her home.
