CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — A former University of Virginia student pleaded guilty Wednesday to fatally shooting three football players and wounding two other students on the Charlottesville campus in 2022.
Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., 25, pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder, two counts of aggravated malicious wounding and five counts of use of a firearm in the commission of a felony. A four-day sentencing hearing is scheduled to begin Feb. 4 in Albemarle County Circuit Court.
Authorities said that Jones opened fire on a charter bus as he and other students arrived back on campus after seeing a play and having dinner together in Washington, D.C.
Authorities had not released a motive. Jones was a former member of the university’s football team at the time of the shooting. A witness told police that he had targeted specific victims.
Football players Lavel Davis Jr., D’Sean Perry and Devin Chandler were killed, while a fourth member of the team, Mike Hollins, and another student, Marlee Morgan, were wounded.
The shooting erupted near a parking garage and set off panic and a 12-hour lockdown of the campus until the suspect was captured. His trial on murder charges and other counts had been scheduled for January.
Within days of the shooting, university leaders had asked for an outside review to investigate UVA’s safety policies and procedures, its response to the violence and its prior efforts to assess the potential threat of the student who was eventually charged. School officials acknowledged he previously had been on the radar of the university’s threat-assessment team.
In June, a lawyer representing some of the victims and their families had announced that the university had agreed to pay $9 million in a settlement.
Kimberly Wald said at the time that the school would pay $2 million each to the families of the three students who died, the maximum allowable under Virginia law. The school would also pay $3 million total to the two students who were wounded.
Following the settlement, some of the families had also called for the immediate release of an independent probe into the shooting, which was completed last year.
Wald had said the university should have removed Jones from campus before the attack because he displayed multiple red flags through erratic and unstable behavior.
University officials said they had postponed the report’s release last year over concerns that it could affect a trial that had been scheduled for January.
