Former football player charged with murder over college shooting
WASHINGTON: A former US college football player was arrested Monday and charged with murder after three members of the current University of Virginia team were shot dead at the school a few hours south of the US capital.
The latest outburst of campus gun violence came as four people were found dead in a separate incident near the University of Idaho.
Police chief Timothy Longo told a news conference that a 22-year-old UVA student, Christopher Darnell Jones Jr, had been taken into custody on suspicion of carrying out the shooting Sunday night and faces murder charges.
Police in Henrico County said Jones was arrested “without incident” Monday morning in a suburb of Richmond, about 120 kilometres southeast of the UVA campus in Charlottesville.
The shooting took place on a bus while students were returning from a field trip, according to UVA president Jim Ryan, who said all three of those who died were members of the school’s football team.
Two other students were wounded, Ryan said, and one of them was in critical condition. lies.”
The campus in Charlottesville, about 160 kilometres southwest of Washington, was locked down for hours while police searched for Jones, a former UVA football player listed on the Cavaliers’ 2018 roster as a first-year running back.
Longo said Jones had previously been brought to the attention of the school’s “threat assessment” team after a report that he possessed a gun but no weapon was discovered.