After an extensive manhunt that stretched overnight, police on Monday announced they had apprehended a University of Virginia student suspected of killing three football players and wounding two others in a mass shooting on the school’s main campus on Sunday night.
University President Jim Ryan issued a statement early Monday confirming that the suspect, Christopher Darnell Jones, Jr., was “one of our students.” Jones opened fire on a bus full of students returning to UVA from a field trip to see a play in the Washington, D.C. area, school officials said.
Jones is included on the university’s athletics website as a 2018 football player who did not appear in any games, though it is unclear if he remains a student at UVA. All three victims—Lavel Davis Jr., D’Sean Perry, and Devin Chandler—were identified by Ryan as members of the school’s football team.
The victims were identified (from left to right) as D’Sean Perry, Devin Chandler and Lavel Davis, Jr.
UVA Sports
One of the two injured students was identified by his father as Michael Hollins Jr., a junior running back at UVA. In an interview with The Washington Post, Michael Hollins Sr. said his son knew Jones from the football team. He said he was at work in Fairfax, where he is employed as a city bus inspector, when he got the call shortly before midnight that his son had been shot in the back.
Hollins Sr. said that officials told him Jones was on the field trip with the others and that he suddenly began firing when the bus got back to campus.
“He waited until they all got back to Charlottesville, and he just shot up the bus,” he said, adding that doctors told him his son would recover. “They said because of his age and physical condition, he’s doing exceptionally well.”
Jones’ mother, Margo Ellis, told The Daily Beast she is “not speaking to reporters right now” when contacted by phone on Monday.
UVA Police Chief Timothy J. Longo was informed mid-way through a press conference Monday morning that Jones had been nabbed. The student-athlete was found about 77 miles away in Henrico County shortly before 11 a.m., according to local police.
Longo said that authorities had received information from someone at the university last fall that Jones owned a gun. The Office of Student Affairs followed up with Jones and his roommate, who said he hadn’t ever seen a weapon.
Over the course of the investigation, UVA police learned of a Feb. 2021 concealed weapons violation that “occurred outside the City of Charlottesville,” Longo said, adding that Jones was required by school rules to report the case to the UVA administration but never did. Administrative charges through the university’s judiciary council are still pending, according to Longo.
“He had been called to our attention,” Longo said. “I wanted you to hear it from me, not hear it from someone else.”
Relatives of Jones’ told NBC 12 on Monday that he had been hazed while at UVA. School officials confirmed an alleged hazing incident, according to CBS reporter Olivia Rinaldi, but witnesses at the time reportedly would not cooperate. A source who knows Jones but asked not to be named told The Daily Beast that he had “been bullied” at UVA, “and it was bad.”
In a 2018 article on Jones, the Richmond Times-Dispatch painted a picture of a difficult childhood characterized by “a fractured family, school fighting and suspensions.” Jones told the outlet that his father leaving when Jones was just five was “one of the most traumatic things that happened to me.” The piece added that Jones attended an alternative school where he was able to avoid bullying, and that he had moved in with his grandmother in Petersburg in 2016 after the relationship with his mother deteriorated. It also said that in the two years before he started at UVA, “mentors helped him let go of his anger.”
In July 2018, Jones received the Dr. Porcher L. Taylor, Jr. Scholastic Award, which comes with a $1,000 scholarship.
Tracie Baines’ daughter attended Petersburg High School with Jones, and both knew him well, she said.
“This is so out of character, so very, very out of character,” Baines told The Daily Beast on Monday. “And when I say that, I’m not saying it to demean or to erase the tragedy that has occurred. But I know a different Chris.”
A shocked Baines, through intermittent tears, said Jones had been a conscientious teen who did well in school and worked to help out at home.
“I know a Chris who helped take care of his grandmother, who helped take care of his family,” Baines continued. “I know a Chris who got a scholarship to UVA, and it’s just a tragedy for all those involved.”
However, she said she hadn’t spoken to Jones since he got to UVA in 2018 and has “no knowledge of what transpired there.”
“It makes it more hurtful for me because my first cousin was killed Thursday in gun violence,” Baines said.
Lavel Davis Jr., a wide receiver, was first identified as a victim by his cousin, Newbury College assistant football coach Sean Lampkin, who wrote in a tweet that “God took one of his most kind, humble, loving soldiers off of the battlefield last night.”
In a Twitter thread, ESPN reporter Andrea Adelson recalled interviewing Davis for a past article, which she said now “brought tears to my eyes.” In it, Davis explained why it was important to him to be part of the Groundskeepers, a community outreach and social justice movement at UVA.
“Whatever I can do, even if it’s a small percentage to bring awareness to all the injustice our school has been through, just to shine a light on it and change it in the right direction,” Davis said, alluding to the “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally that took place in Charlottesville in 2017. “It’s a blessing to be a part of it. Because I know these four years are going to go by quick.”
Jack Hamilton, a professor of American Studies, had both Davis and Devin Chandler as students, he said on Twitter, describing them as “wonderful people.”
Chandler always had a “huge smile,” was “really gregarious and funny,” and was “really excited” about declaring his American Studies major, Hamilton said. “[O]ne of those people who’s just impossible not to like. [I]t is so sad and enraging that he is gone.”
Davis was quiet, but “such a nice guy,” according to Hamilton, who said Davis approached him after their first class to introduce himself.
“[O]ne thing that struck me about vel was how much his classmates liked him and vice versa,” he wrote. “[I]n my experience star athletes often tend to hang out with other athletes (understandable, given the time commitment) but vel seemed to go out of his way to make friends with non-athletes. [A]nyways I am just stunned and devastated and completely at a loss but wanted to say all this because they were great people with truly limitless futures and they should still be here. [I]t breaks my heart.”
Another teacher echoed Hamilton’s sentiments, calling Davis “sweet and ambitious, with a great smile.” Chandler, she said, “was soft-spoken and really wanted to learn and do well. it’s all so devastating.”
The third victim, D’Sean Perry, was a 22-year-old linebacker for the Virginia Cavaliers college football team and an “exemplary teammate” who always had a smile, Charlottesville’s Daily Progress reported. His father Sean Perry, and mother, Happy Perry, said they were flying to Virginia from their hometown of Miami on Monday.
Longo said Jones is being charged with three counts of second-degree murder and three counts of using a handgun in the commission of a crime.
UVA canceled classes Monday as a shelter-in-place order remained in effect, though the order was lifted at around 10:30 a.m. “based upon a thorough search on and around” the college’s grounds, the UVA Police Department said. Charlottesville City Schools also canceled classes for its 4,000-strong student body “in order to give police time to investigate while they search for the suspect in our community.”
On Monday, Virginia’s Democrat Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine shared messages of support to the victims’ families. “Thinking of all impacted by the tragic act of violence on UVA’s campus,” Warner wrote.
“Heartbroken to hear of another Virginia community devastated by gun violence,” Kaine tweeted. “Praying for the UVA community and closely monitoring the situation.” He added: “We must take further action to make our communities safer.”
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