Vigil held at UVA to remember shooting victims
Students and faculty at the University of Virginia, along with members of the Charlottesville, Virginia community are mourning the loss of three members of the school’s football team who were fatally shot Sunday night, setting off panic and a long lockdown of the campus until the suspect was captured Monday.
Students and faculty at the University of Virginia, along with members of the Charlottesville, Virginia community are mourning the loss of three members of the school’s football team who were fatally shot Sunday night, setting off panic and a long lockdown of the campus until the suspect was captured Monday.
Police say a former member of the school’s football team, 22-year-old Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., was the gunman, and they say he fatally shot the three current players as they returned from a field trip Sunday evening.
Monday night, students and community members gathered at St. Paul’s Memorial Church on the UVA to remember the victims.
The violence erupted near a parking garage just after 10:15 p.m. Sunday as a charter bus full of students returned from seeing a play in Washington.
University President Jim Ryan said authorities did not have a “full understanding” of the motive or circumstances surrounding the shooting.
The killings happened at a time when the nation is on edge from a string of mass shootings during the last six months, including an attack that killed 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas; a shooting at a Fourth of July parade in a Chicago suburb that killed seven people and wounded more than 30; and a shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, that killed 10 people and wounded three.
Ryan identified the three slain students as Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and D’Sean Perry.
Two students were wounded. One was hospitalized in critical condition, and the other was in good condition, Ryan said.
The shooting touched off an intense manhunt that included a building-by-building search of the campus. The lockdown order was lifted late Monday morning.
Jones was taken into custody without incident in suburban Richmond, police said.
The arrest warrants for Jones charged him with three counts of second-degree murder and three counts of using a handgun in the commission of a felony, Longo said.
Jones had once been on the football team, but he had not been part of the team for at least a year, Longo said. The UVA football website listed him as a team member during the 2018 season and said he did not play in any games.
Jones came to the attention of the university’s threat-assessment team this fall after a person unaffiliated with the school reported a remark Jones apparently made about possessing a gun, Longo said.
No threat was reported in conjunction with the concern about the weapon, but officials looked into it, following up with Jones’ roommate.
Classes and other academic activities were cancelled for Tuesday. A university-wide vigil was being planned for a later date.
