Miss Virginia explained away the discrepancies on her resume as honest misunderstandings. She didn't survive a closer inspection that reportedly found she had billed herself as a first-year law student.
When the pageant asked Andrea Bal-len-gee to resign, she refused.The Miss Virginia Scholarship Pageant Board then voted unanimously to terminate her title and take away her crown, as well as a car and apartment loaned to her for a year. She gets to keep a $7,500 "non-forfeitable" scholarship.
"The board's action was taken to protect the dignity and honor of the Miss Virginia Pageant," pageant president Robert Bennett said at a news conference Thursday.
Ballengee, 21, told WTKR-TV in Norfolk she was surprised by the board's action.
"They had been so supportive - the Miss Virginia board had - up until now," she said. "The whole time they were stating, `You are our Miss Virginia and you will remain our Miss Virginia.' "
Neither pageant officials nor Ballengee would discuss the "new facts" that prompted the move. But WDBJ-TV reported that pageant officials had learned that Ballengee, who had billed herself as a first-year law student, had not been accepted to the University of Miami law school.
Pageant spokesman Bud Oakey declined to comment on that report.
Ballengee's attorney, Wayne Haig, would not discuss the specific issue that led to her removal.
The credentials of the first runner-up, Amber Medlin, will be reviewed and the board will announce within a week who will represent Virginia at the Miss America scholarship pageant on Sept. 16 in Atlantic City, N.J.
Pageant Director Margaret Baker said officials weren't sure how to get Miss Ballengee to relinquish the actual crown, the brand-new green Chevy Camaro and the keys to the apartment.
Ballengee's crown began to totter within a week of her July 1 coronation when questions were raised about the academic honors she listed on her pageant resume.
She had also claimed she was a "Highest Honors Graduate" at Tabb High School in Yorktown and had won the Most Outstanding Female Athlete award.
All of those claims were proven false.