UVA shootings: Christopher Jones ‘targeted’ football players but motive still unknown, court hears

University of Virginia football head coach Tony Elliot described during his first press conference on Tuesday how the tragedy that unfolded this past week on campus, which saw three of his football players shot dead, was a “nightmare.”

“It feels like it’s a nightmare, to be honest with you,” Mr Elliot said on Tuesday afternoon, according to WSET. “I’m ready for somebody to pinch me, wake me up, and say that this didn’t happen.”

The head coach said that as soon as it was safe to do so, he collected the university’s remaining football players for a meeting, which was “really, really tough,” he said while tearing up.

The UVA head coach explained how the school had begun to pool resources so that counselling would be made available to the players as soon as possible, while also being careful to make sure none of the surviving teammates are left alone while the days pass.

“We’re looking for the positive and keeping close reigns on each other so we can grieve,” he said.

The mother of one of the University of Virginia football players who was severely injured during a shooting on Sunday night told CBS News in her first sit down interview since the tragedy struck that her son was in “critical condition” after having gone through two serious operations.

Mike Hollins, a running back with the school’s football team, is in critical but stable condition, Brenda Collins confirmed during a Tuesday night interview with the news outlet.

But, she noted, her son isn’t aware of the deadly fate that unfolded for his other three teammates during the brutal assault. Her son, she said, is using a pen and paper to inquire about how his friends fared during the shooting that claimed three.

“What I’m hearing is, Mike made it off the bus, but went back to help his friends,” the mother told CBS, adding that three student-athletes who were killed - D’Sean Perry, Devin Chandler and Lavel Davis Jr - were all close friends of her son’s.

“He has written D’Sean’s name, he has written Devin’s name and then I believe it was an L,” she said.

Watch the full clip below.

The father of one of victims wounded during Sunday night’s mass shooting says that he can’t wrap his head around why the suspected shooter - who had previously been flagged to a multidisciplinary threat assessment team at UVA - was still enrolled at the time of the incident.

“This guy was on the radar. News conference said he was on the radar back in September and again in February for some reason,” said Mike Hollins Sr, whose son remains in hospital after being shot in the back on Sunday night. “My son and three of his buddies have to suffer the consequences for slow reaction to judicate this.”

On Monday, UVA Police Chief Tim Longo said during a press conference that Christopher Darnell Jones Jr was known to the university’s threat assessment team after an investigation was launched into a hazing incident that had involved him.

For Mr Hollins Sr, the revelation that the 22-year-old suspect was on the school’s radar but didn’t materialise into any actionable discipline has done little to assuage his concerns for his wounded son, who he hopes will still achieve his goal of graduating this December.

“You never would have thought it would be someone he knew and for what reasons we don’t know,” Mr Hollins said in an interview with WSET. “We don’t know the reasoning behind it. Was it a vendetta?”

As more details begin to come to light around the events that up to the mass shooting that took place at the UVA Charlottesville campus on Sunday night, the scrutiny around the suspected gunman’s past has also increased as more damning revelations begin to eke out.

For instance, during Christopher Darnell Jones Jr arraignment on Wednesday, the prosecutor told Albemarle General District Court Judge Kenneth Andrew Sneathern about the 22-year-old’s previous misdemeanours, which included his conviction of having a concealed weapon on 10 June 2021 and a misdemeanour conviction for a hit-and-run property damage and reckless driving.

When Jones was arrested for the concealed weapon misdemeanour, he still had outstanding warrants for the hit-and-run, which had occurred earlier that year.

On 28 October 2021, Jones was convicted on the misdemeanour hit-and-run property damage and reckless driving charges, for which a judge issued a 12-month suspended sentence on each of those charges.

Here, The Independent provides a breakdown of everything we know about the alleged gunman in Sunday night’s mass shooting at UVA.

D’Sean Perry, one of three football players killed during a brazen shooting on and around a charter bus returning from a field trip at the University of Virginia on Sunday night, was remembered by a close family friend as a “gentle giant” who would be “truly missed”.

“His smile would light up a room,” said Earl Sims Jr, the football player’s former high school coach, during a press conference held on Wednesday. “I echo the sentiments of several of my colleagues when I say that D’Sean was a delightful, respectful, hard-working person who was one of the best overall young men our communities had to offer,” he added, according to WTVR.

“When anyone met D’Sean, the first thing they would see is this gentle giant with this humility, this absolute humility for an incredible athlete, incredible student, his kindness, his incredible character and his uncanny sense of humour,” added family friend Michael Haggard, whose own son played football with D’Sean throughout high school.

The University of Virginia canceled its final home football game of the season Wednesday, the same day a student accused of killing three members of the team and wounding two other students in an on-campus shooting made his first appearance in court.

University officials and police have said Christopher Darnell Jones Jr, 22, joined a group of about two dozen others on a field trip Sunday from the Charlottesville campus to see a play in the nation’s capital. When their bus arrived back on campus, authorities have said Jones opened fire, killing Lavel Davis Jr, D’Sean Perry and Devin Chandler, and wounding two others, one of them also a football player.

The violence at the state’s flagship public university has set off days of mourning among students and faculty, the broader Charlottesville community and other supporters. Classes resumed Wednesday, though the school announced it was canceling Saturday’s game against Coastal Carolina.

No decision has been made yet about whether UVA will participate in its final game of the season on 26 November against Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, the university said in a news release.

Tributes for Lavel Davis Jr, one of the three football stars from the University of Virginia killed this week, began pouring in online for the young man who was painted as being “a star both on and off the field”.

“He played his heart out for UVA and wanted to be the best, and he was,” wrote Heather Mitchell, who is organising a GoFundMe on behalf of the young man’s family.

“He loved his parents, his family, his community, and he had a love for football like no other,” she wrote. “His death is tragic and I cannot begin to imagine the pain that his mom and dad, brother and sister, and extended family is feeling,” she added, before asking that people contribute to the online fundraiser to help “lessen the burden” for his family “as they take on this terrible tragedy.”

As of Wednesday afternoon, the fundraiser had collected more than $126,000 (£105,944) to go toward the goal of $150,000 (£126,124).

In a 2018 profile from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, then-18-year-old Christopher Darnell Jones described brushes of fights he’d get into with his peers that would sometimes lead to suspensions.

He admitted that most of those altercations stemmed from kids seeming surprised that a “kid from the projects” was constantly raising his hand to answer questions.

“I would get upset because my intelligence was being insulted. Kids would pick on me — ‘Why did you do that? Why did you answer that question?’” Mr Jones told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “And in that world, disrespect means you should fight.”

Mentors throughout Mr Jones’ high school years provided guidance, with some confiding to the news outlet that they would take him out to restaurants for meals or buy him new clothes when they noticed him wearing the same outfit days in a row.

“I think he had more anger when I first met him,” said one mentor, Xavier Richardson, interviewed for the article. “He always had strong goals. He was ambitious, but his anger simply got in the way,” Mr Richardson said, who had met the teen in the 11th grade.

The Independent’s Johanna Chisholm has the story:

The alleged gunman in Sunday’s shooting at the University of Virginia made bizarre comments before killing three students and injuring two others.

Twenty-two-year-old Christopher Darnell Jones, who has been identified by UVA police as the suspect in the shooting, reportedly made remarks about certain students “messing” with him and pushed one of the victims, Lavel Davis Jr, when the group arrived at the Charlottesville campus from a school trip on Sunday night.

“After [Mr Jones] pushed him, he was like ‘You guys are always messing with me.’ He said something like that but it was really bizarre because they didn’t talk to him the whole trip,” Ryan Lynch, who was on the bus when Mr Jones allegedly opened fire, told local news station KYW.

A family friend of Mike Hollins, one of the two victims who survived the attack, also said that Mr Jones made comments about a video game before the violence unfolded.

Andrea Blanco has the full report here.