MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) – A state board on Wednesday rejected a $1 million claim filed by the parents of a slain Auburn University student, who said their daughter might still be alive if the university had maintained its own police force at the time of her abduction from the campus.
The Alabama Board of Adjustment denied the claim by the family of Lauren Burk, which questioned a decision by the university to merge its police force with the city of Auburn. The family claimed that led to inadequate security on campus.
The 18-year-old college freshman from suburban Atlanta, Georgia, was on her way to the library to study when she was abducted by a man at gunpoint from a campus parking lot in March of 2008. She was forced to undress and fatally shot off campus when she tried to escape her captor. Police later arrested Courtney Lockhart, who was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death.
The woman’s father, Jim Burk, said the family had filed the $1 million claim to press Auburn to re-establish a campus police force. He said the claim was never about the money. “If they would have had the on-campus security when Lauren was attending that would have reduced the possibility of her abduction and ultimately getting murdered,” Jim Burk said after the decision.
Lockhart told investigators that he had been sitting on campus looking for easy prey much of the day, that he left once when he saw a patrol car, and then returned to grab Burk, according to testimony at an earlier hearing. Burk was shot in the chest as she jumped out of the moving car.