Suspect caught in fatal shooting of 3 U.VA. football players

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — A University of Virginia student and former member of the school’s football team fatally shot three current players as they returned from a field trip, authorities said, setting off panic and a 12-hour lockdown of the campus until the suspect was captured Monday.

Students who were told to shelter in place beginning late Sunday described terrifying hours in hiding. While police searched for the gunman through the night, students sought safety in closets, dorm rooms, libraries and apartments. They listened to police scanners and tried to remember everything they were taught as children during active-shooter drills.

“I think all of us were just really unsettled and trying to keep, you know, our cool and level heads during the situation,” student Shannon Lake said.

Officials got word during a morning news briefing that the suspect, 22-yearold Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., had been arrested.

“Just give me a moment to thank God, breathe a sigh of relief,” university Police Chief Timothy Longo Sr. said after learning Jones was in custody.

The violence erupted near a parking garage just after 10:15 p.m. Sunday as a charter bus full of students returned to Charlottesville from seeing a play in Washington.

University President Jim Ryan said authorities did not have a “full understanding” of the motive or circumstances of the shooting.

“The entire university community is grieving this morning,” a visibly strained Ryan said.

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.

Lake, a third-year student from Crozet, Virginia, ended up spending the night with friends in a lab room, much of the time in a storage closet.

Elizabeth Paul, a student from northern Virginia, was working at a computer in the library when she got a call from her mom, who had received word about the shooting.

Paul said she initially brushed off any concern, thinking it was probably something minor. She realized she needed to take it seriously when her computer lit up with a warning about an active shooter.

“I think it said, ‘Run. Hide. Fight,’” she said.

Paul said she stayed huddled with several others in the library. She spent most of the night on the phone with her mom.

“Not even talking to her the whole time necessarily, but she wanted the line to be on so that if I needed something she was there,” she said.

Ryan identified the three slain students as Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and D’sean Perry.

Two students were wounded and hospitalized, Ryan said.

Mike Hollins, a running back on the football team, was in stable condition Monday, his mother, Brenda Hollins, told The Associated Press.

“Mike is a fighter — and he’s showing it,” she said after flying to Virginia from Louisiana. “We have great doctors who have been working with him. And most importantly, we have God’s grace and God’s hands on him.”

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.

It was not immediately clear whether Jones had an attorney or when he would make his first court appearance.

His father, Chris Jones Sr., told Richmond TV station WTVR he was in disbelief after getting a call from police on Monday.

“My heart goes out to their families. I don’t know what to say, except I’m sorry, on his behalf, and I apologize,” he 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.