TOLEDO, Ohio -- A University of Toledo police officer was charged Saturday with killing a sophomore nursing student who was shot 14 times in a strange, apparently random campus slaying.
Investigators have no motive for the killing of Melissa Anne Herstrum. Her body was discovered on the university's Scott Park campus early Monday, police Lt. Thomas Gulch said.
Jeffery Hodge, 22, was charged with aggravated murder and will be arraigned in Toledo Municipal Court Monday.
'I can't support a motive at this point,' Gulch said.
Herstrum, 19, was buried Friday near her home in Rocky River, a suburb of Cleveland.
Gulch said the murder weapon, a 9mm gun that has not been recovered, appeared to be the same weapon that was used to fire shots into a woman's dormitory the week previous.
University director of public safety Frank Pizzulo said his officers are not issued 9mm handguns.
Hodge has been a member of the campus police department for about one year. Before that Hodge worked as a dispatcher while attending classes, Pizzulo said at a news conference that Toledo police called to announce the arrest.
The victim was found dead around 4 a.m. Monday near an engineering building in a dimly lighted section of campus. The time of death had not been determined.
Someone had telephoned a taxicab company to report a robbery and instructed the dispatcher to call campus police. Both city and campus police went to investigate the alleged robbery scene, and a campus police officer discovered the body in the snow, Gulch said.
'Our key, I think, was in the manner it was reported,' Gulch said. 'It was not consistant with a normal crime reporting process.'
Several hours before her body was found, Herstrum had stopped at a car accident to offer medical assistance. Gulch said Hodge was also there.
Herstrum returned home, but left her off-campus apartment again after receiving a telephone call. Her car was found parked near the campus, but the keys were found in a trash bin outside the building where she was shot. Her driver's license was found in a different location, which police said led them to begin suspecting that a police officer might be involved.
While Hodge and Herstrum were both at the accident scene, there was no indication that they met or talked there. Police were having trouble establishing a connection between the two.
'There is no record of a traffic stop,' Gulch said. 'It was random contact as best as we can determine.'
The campus police car that was assigned to Hodge has been impounded by Toledo police, which took the lead in the investigation. An autopsy ruled out sexual attack, but found evidence that the woman's wrists had been bound.
The shooting at the woman's dormitory MacKinnon Hall and Herstrum's slaying have created fear among the university's student body. Campus police have held two meetings with student groups to help ease the fright.
