WELDON, N.C. -- Authorities found the nude body of one of three North Carolina Wesleyan cheerleaders abducted from the college campus in a an abandoned gravel pit pond Thursday and arrested a blood-soaked man trying to flee the pit.
The other two women had escaped and led police to the scene.
The hands of Kermit Smith, 23, were so bloody 'they looked like he had been killing hogs' when he was arrested at gunpoint while trying to flee the pit Thursday morning, Halifax County Sheriff W.C. Bailey said.
Bailey said Smith had left the area earlier, but returned and tried to hide the dead coed's body.
Bailey said he was driving to the gravel pit with one of the two cheerleaders who escaped their captor when they saw a white Camaro. The girl cried 'That's him!'
The suspect threw up his hands and surrendered when Bailey drew his service revolver, the sheriff said.
Bailey charged Smith, an unemployed Roanoke Rapids man, with murder, rape and robbery. He was being held in the Halifax County Jail without bond.
'His hands were bloody. His coat was bloody,' Bailey said. 'His car was bloody. He was barefooted and dripping wet.'
Authorities identified the victim as Whelette Collins, 20, of Rocky Mount, a freshman at North Carolina Wesleyan, a school of about 400 resident students near Rocky Mount. Bailey said her skull was crushed and there was a bruise on the right side of her forehead. Her body was sent to Chapel Hill for an autopsy.
Dawn Killen, 19, of Somerdale, N.J., and Yolanda Marie Woods, 19, of Baltimore, were identified as the cheerleaders who escaped.
All three coeds were black, while Smith is white. But Bailey said the incident did not appear to be racially motivated. He said the 'three women had never seen him before and he had never seen them before.'
Bailey said Smith went home after the two cheerleaders escaped and told his mother he had been attacked and robbed. After she took him to the hospital for medical attention Thursday morning, he told her he lost his keys and wanted to go look for them, Bailey said.
When he returned to the pond, Bailey said, he saw Miss Collins' body floating on the water and put her feet into a cinder block.
'He said he threw her in the pond. He said he wanted to see his lawyer,' Bailey said.
The two who survived the ordeal escaped when they attacked their abductor about 4:30 a.m. with a single lug wrench they found in the car's trunk, where he had held them captive. They took Bailey's gun, he said, and fired at him -- only to discover it was merely a cap pistol.
Bailey said they hid in the brush until daylight, then made their way two to three miles down the banks of the Roanoke River for about four hours before a motorist picked them up on Interstate 95. The motorist flagged down a highway patrolman.
'They had on their cheerleader uniforms,' Bailey said. 'They were cold, but they were not hurt, other than scratches by briars and bushes. They were real cold and scared.'
The cheerleaders' nightmare began about 7:30 p.m. Wednesday when they left the school's gymnasium after a basketball game. Bailey said they went to Miss Collins' car and when they started to leave, a man with a pistol stopped them.
He forced Miss Killen and Miss Woods into the trunk of his car and made Miss Collins ride in the front with him.
After driving about 30 miles to the gravel pit, he opened the car's trunk, then closed it and left with Miss Collins. They returned, Bailey said, moved the car, and left again. When he returned, Miss Collins was no longer with him. He opened the trunk, ordered the two cheerleaders out and they attacked him with the lug wrench.