Suspect in custody after 3 Virginia football players are killed in shooting
By The New York Times
A University of Virginia student has been arrested and charged in the shooting deaths of three members of the school’s football team and the wounding of two other people Sunday night, university officials said Monday.
The suspect is being charged with three counts of second-degree murder and three counts of using a handgun in the commission of a felony, authorities said.
The university campus was locked down under a shelter-in-place order for nearly 12 hours while authorities searched for the suspect, whom they identified as Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., 22. The university canceled classes Monday, and public schools in the surrounding county were closed.
The order was lifted around the time the suspect was arrested without incident near Richmond, Virginia, about an hour’s drive from Charlottesville.
The university’s president, Jim Ryan, identified the three students who were killed as Devin Chandler of Virginia Beach; Lavel “Tyler” Davis of Dorchester, South Carolina; and D’Sean Perry of Miami.
The football players had just returned from a class trip to see a play and were attacked as their bus pulled into a campus parking garage, Ryan said at a news conference Monday.
The university’s athletics website listed Jones as a one-time member of its football team; the website listed him as a freshman member of the team who did not appear in any games in 2018.
Jones had come to the attention of the university’s threat assessment team in September after he made a comment about possessing a gun, Chief Tim Longo of the university police said during a news conference Monday. Jones was also involved in a hazing investigation, the chief said.
The university’s office of emergency management said it received reports of shots fired at a garage on Culbreth Road around 10:30 p.m. Sunday.