DANIELLE DENNIS-TOWNE - 18 yo - Portsmouth VA/ Steger IL/ Kitty Hawk NC

Friends and family in south suburban Steger mourned Danielle Dennis-Towne on Monday while authorities in North Carolina and Virginia tried to piece together how the 18-year-old honors student's body ended up in the trunk of a friend's car.

Police
in Clifton Forge, Va., arrested Enrico Luciano Mascaro after finding a
body believed to be Dennis-Towne in the trunk of Mascaro's 1996 Mustang
on Friday, Chief Barry Balser told WAVY-TV in Portsmouth.

The
grisly discovery ended a search that began Friday when police
discovered a crime scene more than 300 miles away in a wooded area in Kitty Hawk, N.C., the TV station reported.Mascaro and Dennis-Towne were childhood friends who had been staying
with Mascaro's parents about 10 miles away in the resort town of Nags Head, the station reported.The Alleghany County
medical examiner was awaiting dental records to identify the body and
had not yet released a cause of death, a spokeswoman said Monday.In
Steger, Dennis-Towne's grandmother said the close-knit family was
already struggling with the loss of a young woman who only days ago was
preparing for a bright future."So many of her friends have told
me how when she walked into a room, she would just light it up," said
Sandra Joyce, who raised Dennis-Towne after the girl's parents died when
Dennis-Towne was a toddler.Dennis-Towne was an honors student at
Bloom Trail High School in Chicago Heights and was commander of the
Navy Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps — the highest rank in the
program. Joyce said she swelled with pride seeing her soft-spoken
granddaughter barking orders to the JROTC drill team as a senior."It
was so amazing to see. I told her, 'I wished you would speak up like
that when you talk to me, so I could hear you,'" she said. "She was so
good. She never gave me any trouble."Dennis-Towne was to have started classes at Ripon College in Wisconsin
in the fall on a full scholarship and planned to continue in Army ROTC
and then in the military as an engineer after graduation, Joyce said.Mascaro
has been charged with homicide in Kitty Hawk, police told WAVY.
Mascaro's parents reported the two missing Friday and told police they
last saw them Thursday night, the station reported.Mascaro's
father, John, on Monday referred comment to his son's attorney, who did
not respond to an interview request from the Tribune.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-steger-body-20110719,0,4541536.story

NAGS HEAD, N.C.
— A college-bound Illinois teen reported missing on a coastal
vacation had hoped to join the military, according to relatives who were
grieving Monday even though police hadn't confirmed a body found in a
car trunk was hers.
Danielle Dennis-Towne, 18, was an active member of her high
school's Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps before graduating and was
headed to Ripon College in Wisconsin, where she planned to study
engineering, according to her grandmother.
"We're all just so sad," said Geraldine Dennis, of Beecher, Ill. "It's the worst nightmare a family can ever imagine."
Authorities in Clifton Forge, Va., arrested 19-year-old Enrico
Luciano Mascaro, of Nags Head, N.C., on Friday after tracking him to a
1996 Ford Mustang that investigators say had a woman's body in the
trunk. He was to be arraigned on a charge of being a fugitive from
justice in a Virginia courthouse Tuesday.
Mascaro, who knew Dennis-Towne when they were younger, also faces
a charge of homicide in Kitty Hawk, an idyllic vacation spot in North
Carolina's Outer Banks, according to that town's police chief. It wasn't
immediately clear Monday if he has a lawyer in either state.
Although police have not released the name of the victim, Kitty
Hawk police had issued a nationwide alert Friday for Mascaro and
Dennis-Towne, of Steger, Ill., south of Chicago, who was visiting
Mascaro's family in the town of Nags Head, about 10 miles south of Kitty
Hawk. The two had been reported missing by Mascaro's family, who had
last seen the pair Thursday, according to Nags Head Chief of Police
Kevin Brinkley.
"Enrico's parents were concerned that they had not come home,"
Brinkley said. "They could have stayed overnight somewhere at a beach
party or something like that."
Police issued the alert after a call from a tipster reporting
items in a wooded area of Kitty Hawk that were traced to the pair.
Brinkley declined to specify what items had been found, but said they
led police to believe that the two needed to be found immediately.
Dennis-Towne, who had just graduated from high school, loved
horseback riding on her great-uncle's property in Wisconsin, and was
looking forward to spending time at the beach in North Carolina before
heading off to college, her grandmother said.
"She was a happy girl, a very happy girl, but not a wild girl by
any means," Dennis said. "On school nights, she wanted to go to bed at 9
o'clock because she knew she had a full day in school."
Members of Mascaro's family declined to comment to a reporter who
visited their Nags Head home, a two-story cottage a couple of blocks
from the beach. It wasn't immediately clear when Mascaro moved to the
Outer Banks, but the family's previous landlord said they had rented
their old home on a Nags Head golf course for about two years before
moving out in January.
Mascaro and Dennis-Towne became friends when his family lived in
Illinois, Brinkley said. Dennis said other members of her family knew
the Mascaros, but that she had never met them.
Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/top/all/7658663.html#ixzz1SWCGcSfg