A tearful 16-year-old girl sat beside her newly appointed attorney Wednesday morning as a judge heard the reason she faces a murder charge.

Before 19-year-old William Christopher Linn died Monday night, he told police that Melanie Elaine Engleman stabbed him, according to a police report presented in Roanoke Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court.

Judge Joseph Bounds ordered Engleman held without bond. He appointed Roanoke attorney Chris Kowalczuk as her defense counsel.

Kowalczuk declined to comment after the hearing. Engleman's distraught family members said they consider her to be a victim in the case. They declined to be interviewed further.

Her preliminary hearing is scheduled for June 25.

Linn's aunt Sherry Kendrick said that Engleman had been Linn's girlfriend a couple of years ago.

She said Wednesday afternoon that as she understood events, Linn had been visiting his current girlfriend in Vinton when Engleman showed up at her house. Linn left out the back door to avoid Engleman, she said.

"He was going to come to my house," Kendrick said. "He never made it home."

Instead, Linn returned to his girlfriend's house. He had been stabbed, his aunt said.

Police were called about 11:30 p.m. to a house in the 1200 block of Daleton Avenue. According to the police report read in court, before he was taken to the hospital, Linn told police that Engleman stabbed him in the Roanoke Valley SPCA parking lot on Baldwin Avenue Northeast, less than a tenth of a mile away.

He died later that night at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital.

Kendrick called it a "relief" to know her nephew hung on long enough to identify the person who stabbed him.

She said Tuesday that the realization that she would never see her nephew again was just starting to hit her. She talked about how Linn had made a card for her when he was 16, and made a bet with her than she wouldn't still have it when he turned 21.

"I'm going to lay it in his casket," she said, "because I'm not going to see him when he turns 21."