A former University of Virginia student was sentenced on Friday to life in prison for fatally shooting three football players and wounding two other students on the campus in 2022.
Judge Cheryl Higgins gave Christopher Darnell Jones, Jr., who had been on the football team, the maximum possible sentence after listening to five days of testimony. Jones pleaded guilty last year.
The penalty includes five life sentences, one each for the killings of Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and D’Sean Perry, and the aggravated malicious wounding of Michael Hollins and Marlee Morgan, Cville Right Now reported.
Authorities said Jones opened fire aboard a charter bus as he and other students arrived back on campus after seeing a play and having dinner together in Washington, DC. The shooting erupted near a parking garage and prompted a 12-hour lockdown of the Charlottesville campus until the suspect was captured. Many at the school of some 23,000 students huddled inside closets and darkened dorm rooms, while others barricaded the doors of the university’s stately academic buildings.
Jones’ time on the team did not overlap with the players he shot, and there was no indication they knew each other or interacted until briefly before the shooting.
Jones will be able to apply for parole when he turns 60, WTVR reported.
Higgins said no one was bullying Jones that night and no one was threatening him. The sentence was not “vindictive” but rather based on a logical analysis, said Higgins, who is an Albemarle County Circuit Court judge.
Jones had “distortions in his perception” or reality, but understood his actions, she said, noting that he texted people before the shooting that he would either “go to hell or spend 100-plus years in jail.” Jones discarded clothing and the gun afterward and lied to police he ran into five minutes later, the judge said.
Christopher Darnell Jones Jr. Henrico County Sheriff’s Office/AP
Within days of the shooting, university leaders asked for an outside review to investigate the school’s safety policies and procedures, its response to the violence and its prior efforts to assess the potential threat of the student charged. School officials acknowledged Jones had previously been on the radar of the university’s threat-assessment team.
The university last year agreed to pay $9 million in a settlement with victims and their families. Their attorney said the university should have removed Jones from campus before the attack because he displayed multiple red flags through erratic and unstable behaviour.
Jones tearfully addressed the court for 15 minutes during his sentencing hearing, apologising for his actions and for the hurt he caused “everyone on that bus.” Some victims’ family members got up and walked out as he spoke.
“I’m so sorry,” Jones said. “I caused so much pain.”
Speaking to the families, Jones said, “I didn’t know your sons. I didn’t know your boys. And I wish I did.”
Michael Hollins, a football player who was wounded and survived, told reporters after the sentencing that justice was served “for the most part.”
“Even though no amount of time on this earth in jail will repay or get those lives back, just a little bit of peace knowing that the man who committed those crimes won’t be hurting anyone else,” Hollins said.
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