University of Virginia shooting suspect Chris Darnell Jones is arrested after killing three on bus

Three University of Virginia football players were shot dead last night by a former player who opened fire on a field trip bus, killing three and injuring two, before going on the run. 

Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., 22, shot into the bus at around 10.15pm last night, killing three people and injuring two more. 

It remains unclear if he was among passengers on the bus, or if he was waiting for them to return to Virginia. The students had all been in Washington DC attending a play as part of a field trip. 

D’Sean Perry, a linebacker for the school’s team who had played on behalf of the school the previous day, was killed, as was wide receiver Lavel Davis Jr. and Devin Chandler. Dontayvion Wicks and Mike Hollins were injured but survived. 

Jones was taken into custody on Monday morning, some 12 hours after the crime. College officials have since revealed that he was reported to the office of student affairs in September by someone who became concerned when he told them he owned a gun. 

It’s unclear if he made any threats. He was also involved in a hazing investigation.  

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His family is now traveling from Miami to Virginia. 

Jones is described by police in Charlottesville as a black male wearing blue jeans, a burgundy jacket and red shoes. 

He could be driving a black SUV, with the license TWX3580, police said.

The University of Virginia’s main campus has been put into lockdown, with law enforcement saying it was conducting a ‘complete’ search of the campus.

‘Expect increased law enforcement presence,’ police said. 

University of Virginia’s President James E. Ryan confirmed the casualties in a message to the community at around 4am, saying he was ‘heartbroken to report’ that three people had been killed in the shooting. 

The UVA emergency account later Tweeted that multiple police departments were actively searching for the suspect, including a Virginia state police helicopter. 

The follow-up message reiterated that the suspect was armed and dangerous.

‘As of this writing, I am heartbroken to report that the shooting has resulted in three fatalities; two additional victims were injured and are receiving medical care,’ President Ryan’s message said. 

‘We are working closely with the families of the victims, and we will share additional detail as soon as we are able.

‘Our University Police Department has joined forces with other law enforcement agencies to apprehend the suspect, and we will keep our community apprised of developments as the situation evolves,’ he added.

Earlier, Ryan tweeted: ‘There has been a shooting on Culbreth Road and the suspect is at large and considered armed and dangerous.’

He asked the community to follow the UVA emergency Twitter account for updated alerts and for the community to shelter in place.

UVa sophomore Em Gunter, 19, told the Times-Dispatch that she was in her International Residential College dormitory when she heard six shots ring out. She said she can see Culbreth Road from her window.

‘I just have no words,’ Gunter told the Dispatch. ‘This is insane.’ 

She told the outlet that she was living in South Virginia in 2007, where the Virginia Tech mass shooting took place – and remains in people’s minds.

The Culbreth Road parking garage sits on University’s main campus, and is little over 1,000 feet from Madison Hall, the university president’s office, and around 1,500 feet from The Rotunda, an iconic building designed by Thomas Jefferson.

Suspect Jones, one of four children, is originally from Petersburg, Virginia, according to his profile on VirginiaSports.com. 

He studied for three years at Varina High School, and spent his senior year at Petersburg High School.

His profile describes him in glowing terms: Jones was a member of the National Honor Society, and the National Technical Honor Society, who served as president of Key Club – a society for volunteering in the community.

‘High school student members of Key Club perform acts of service in their communities, such as cleaning up parks, collecting clothing and organizing food drives,’ the website states. 

‘They also learn leadership skills by running meetings, planning projects and holding elected leadership positions at the club, district and international levels.’ Jones was also president of Jobs for Virginia Grads Program, and named Student of the Year as a freshman and sophomore at Varina, the site says.

According to a 2018 Richmond Times-Dispatch story, he grew up in the Essex Village and Mosby Court housing complexes in Richmond. The report states that his father left the family when Jones was young, and that Jones got into fights at school.

The shooting is the latest in a wave of gun violence on U.S. college and high school campuses in recent years. 

The bloodshed has fueled the debate over tighter restrictions on access to guns in the United States, where the Second Amendment of the Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms. 

Sunday night’s shooting is not the first to have rocked a Virginia college campus this year. In February, two campus police officers were shot and killed as they responded to reports of a ‘suspicious man’ near a building housing classrooms. 

The suspect in the shooting was a former student. In that same month, a late-night shooting at a hookah bar near Virginia Tech’s campus left one dead and four injured.

On April 16 2007, Virgina Tech was the site of one of the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, when 23-year-old undergraduate Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people and injured 17 others before turning the gun on himself.

Cho, from South Korea, used two semi-automatic pistols in the mass killings.

Since 2002, there have been 14 incidents of gunfire on Virginia college campuses, according to non-profit Everytown for Gun Safety. The organization has counted more than 200 shootings on or near colleges in the Unites States since 2013, and 400 at K-12 schools.

Meanwhile, police in the state of Idaho were investigating a separate incident Monday in which four students were found dead in a home near another university campus, believed to be ‘the victims of homicide.’

Officers responded to a call in the town of Moscow, near the campus of the University of Idaho, about an unconscious individual. 

‘Upon arrival, officers discovered four individuals who were deceased,’ police said in a statement.

‘It is with deep sadness that I share with you that the university was notified today of the death of four University of Idaho students living off-campus believed to be victims of homicide,’ University of Idaho president Scott Green said in a statement.