Chinese students affected by US shootings

The most recent mass shooting on an American college campus has left some Chinese students — the largest group of international students in the US — feeling scared and numb to the violence.

Classes were canceled for a second straight day Tuesday at the University of Virginia (UVA) in Charlottesville as the campus community mourned the deaths of three students who were shot and killed Sunday night by another student at the school.

Police arrested Christopher Darnell Jones, 22, on Monday morning following an intense 12-hour search.

Jones, a former member of the university football team, was charged with second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of three UVA football players, Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr and D’Sean Perry.

Two other people were wounded, once of whom, Mike Hollins, also is on the football team. The students were returning from a class field trip when they were shot.

The shooting was at least the fifth since February on or near college campuses in Virginia.

UVA’s main campus is a popular home for Chinese students. They account for as much as 4.2 percent of the student body, and as much as 50.4 percent of the international student body at UVA.

UVA ranks 71st out of a total of 1,079 US colleges and universities in popularity with students from China, according to College Factual. In 2020, UVA was home to approximately 1,087 Chinese students, according to College Factual.

At slightly more than 290,000 students, China remained the top-sending country to US campuses, although the total had previously been well over 300,000, but declined amid the COVID-19 pandemic and a chill in US-China relations.

“To be honest, I’m used to the occasional gunshot alarms here,” Lin Zeng, a first-year Chinese graduate student at UVA, told China Daily.

Henry Li, also a first-year Chinese graduate student at UVA, said he was planning to go to school Sunday night.

“The time that I planned to go to school happened to be around the same time that the shooting happened. And the location where the shooting took place was the parking lot of our academic building. If I had gone to school to study, I would have run into the shooting in the parking lot,” Li told China Daily.

“I think I’m pretty lucky; laziness saved me,” he said, and added that thinking about it now was still quite scary.

Police responded to a report of shots fired around 10:30 pm in an area near a parking garage surrounded by academic buildings, according to university President Jim Ryan.

At least 68 shootings have unfolded this year on US school grounds, including 15 on college campuses, with at least one person shot in each case, not including the shooter, according to CNN.

On Sunday, four students at the University of Idaho were found dead near campus. They were apparently stabbed to death and were what police are now calling an “isolated, targeted” attack over the weekend.

Their deaths have been ruled homicides, and while no weapons have been located, based on preliminary information, investigators believe that an edged weapon such as a knife was used in the attack, police said in a Tuesday morning statement. Police didn’t have any suspects in custody as of Tuesday morning.

More than 500 people sheltered throughout campus buildings. The parking lot where the shooting took place is steps away from Li’s school building.

Some of the students in Li’s class are from China.

“They were studying in the building near the shooting spot at that time. After the shooting, the school reacted very quickly. The manhunt started immediately, the students entered the shelters, and the doors of the academic building were locked. Many of my classmates just locked in the building overnight,” Li said, adding that they didn’t leave until 4 or 5 in the morning.

That night, Li said he received a total of 58 alerts. “At the end of the night, I became numb to receiving alerts.”

UVA police said a report of shots prompted a shelter-in-place alert in libraries and classrooms, police said. It was lifted about 12 hours later.

The shooting at UVA was one of nine mass shootings over the weekend. There have been nearly 600 mass shootings in the US this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

In some school shootings, the names of Chinese students appeared on the victims’ list.

In 2021, Zheng Shaoxiong, who also went by the name Dennis, a recent graduate Chinese student at University of Chicago, was shot and killed in a robbery attempt in the city’s Hyde Park neighborhood.

Ten months ago, Fan Yiran, a PhD student at the University of Chicago, was killed in a rampage that left at least three people dead.

In the same year, Kevin Jiang, a master’s student at Yale University was shot and killed.

In 2017, Chenwei Guo, a Chinese student at University of Utah, was shot and killed in an attempted carjacking near the campus.

Zeng, the Chinese student at UVA, said he receives about three gunshot alerts per semester. He said the frequency isn’t too high.

“My friend in the Baltimore area receives gunfire alerts almost every two days,” he said.

STEVE HELBER / AP Mourners place flowers on a bridge near the scene of a shooting at the University of Virginia on Tuesday in Charlottesville. Virginia. Three football players at the university were killed, and two other people were wounded. A student suspect is in custody.