The suspect in the shooting at the University of Virginia that killed three members of the football team has been taken into custody, according to police. The suspect in the Sunday night shooting was identified as Christopher Darnell Jones Jr.
Two others were wounded in the shooting, which happened on a bus of students who were returning from an off-campus trip.
University of Virginia President Jim Ryan identified the students killed in the shooting as D’Sean Perry, Lavel Davis Jr., and Devin Chandler.
Jones was also a UVA student and previously had been a member of the football team.
He attended both Varina High School in Henrico and Petersburg High School where he was a star football player, it indicated. In high school, he also was a member of the National Honors Society, president of the Key Club, and named Student of the Year at Varina.
A 2018 Richmond Times-Dispatch profile on Jones noted he grew up in Richmond’s Essex Village and Mosby Court communities before his parents divorced [when he was 5].
“My dad and me were really close. It just hurt me when he had to leave,” he told the Richmond Times-Dispatch in a 2018 interview. “That was one of the most traumatic things that happened to me in my life. I didn’t understand why he left.”
He told the paper that getting in fights at school was a way to relieve stress.
His family moved to Varina for his middle school years. He moved to Petersburg to live with his grandmother in 2016 for a “new start.”
“He always had strong goals. He was ambitious, but his anger simply got in the way,” mentor Xavier Richardson told the RTD in 2018. “Many people, particularly some of the people he will be going to college with, come from a place of privilege. But I try to help him understand that he has been able to succeed despite his obstacles, and he can thrive from them.”
The online bio said he “did not appear in any games” at UVA in 2018 and offered no update beyond that year.
The university’s emergency management issued an alert on Sunday night notifying the campus community of an “active attacker firearm.”
The message warned students to shelter in place following a report of shots fired on Culbreth Road on the northern outskirts of campus. Classes were canceled Monday. The shelter-in-place order was lifted at about 10:45 a.m. Monday.
The UVA Police Department posted a notice online saying multiple police agencies including the state police were searching for a suspect who was considered “armed and dangerous.”
In his letter to campus, the university president said Jones was suspected to have committed the shooting. The campus emergency management Twitter account said that he was believed to be wearing blue jeans and a burgundy jacket and driving a black SUV with Virginia tags.
The university’s emergency management Twitter account said shortly before 7 a.m. that “a complete search on and around UVA Grounds” by law enforcement was underway and urged people on campus to remain sheltered.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives said agents were responding to the campus to assist in the investigation.
Ryan’s letter confirmed that the suspect, who he said was a student, was still at large Monday morning.
“This is a message any leader hopes never to have to send, and I am devastated that this violence has visited the University of Virginia,” Ryan wrote. “This is a traumatic incident for everyone in our community.”
