New Charges Filed Against UVA Student Accused Of Murder In 3 Football Players' Deaths

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA — The University of Virginia student accused of fatally shooting three UVA football players Sunday night on a chartered bus made his first court appearance Wednesday morning in Charlottesville, where prosecutors said he targeted specific students on the bus.

The student, Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., 22, who was initially charged with three counts of second-degree murder, now faces two additional charges of malicious wounding for the two students — UVA football player Michael Hollins Jr. and Marlee Morgan, a sophomore at the university — who were injured in the shooting.

Jones made his court appearance Wednesday by video link from jail in Albemarle County. Jones indicated he intended to hire counsel, and in the interim the court appointed the public defender office to represent him. The court ordered him held in custody without bail, Fox News reported.

The slain students, members of the UVA football team, were junior receiver Lavel Davis Jr., 20, of Dorchester, South Carolina; junior receiver Devin Chandler of Huntersville, North Carolina; and junior defensive end/linebacker D'Sean Perry, 22, of Miami.

Related:

• UVA Shooting: Motive Unclear, Vigil Mourns Slain Football Players
• Slain UVA Football Players: Model Hoo, Kind Smile, Great Teammate

Jones was taken into custody around 11 a.m. on Monday, more than 12 hours after the shooting, which happened in Henrico County, about 70 miles east of Charlottesville.

At Wednesday’s court appearance, prosecutors said Jones appeared to be aiming at certain people on the chartered bus and was not randomly shooting. The bus was returning to Charlottesville after a day trip to Washington, D.C.

Albemarle County Commonwealth's Attorney James M. Hingeley said Jones shot Chandler while he was sleeping, according to a witness.

On Wednesday, UVA announced that it had canceled its final home football game of the season against Coastal Carolina scheduled for Saturday. The Cavaliers have two games remaining on the schedule. It remains unclear whether they will play next week against Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.

University officials said Jones was part of a group of about two dozen students and a professor who traveled on Sunday from the Charlottesville campus to attend a play in Washington, D.C., at the Atlas Performing Arts Center.

The students then went out to get Ethiopian food in D.C. after the play before returning to Charlottesville on the chartered bus.

Ryan Lynch, a sophomore neuroscience major at UVA, said most of the students on the bus were part of a class focused on African American playwrights. The professor invited Jones on the trip to D.C. because he was taking a social justice class with her, Lynch told the Washington Post.

Lynch said she had met Jones before when both had tried out to be runway models for a group on campus called Fashion for a Cause. On the bus trip back to Charlottesville, Lynch said she saw Jones sitting alone in the back and went to talk to him to make sure he felt included.

“You should try to do [Fashion for a Cause] again with me in the spring,” she remembers telling him, according to the Washington Post. After the conversation, she returned to her seat toward the front of the bus.

According to Lynch, the bus was pulling into the garage next to the Culbreth Theatre building on campus when the shooting began.

She hid on the floor, with a jacket and blanket over her head. When the gunshots stopped, Lynch peeked out and saw Jones walking down the aisle of the bus.

At that point, according to the Washington Post, she heard other students shouting: “Get off the bus! We have to get off.”

In his first year at UVA, Jones was a member of the football team during the 2018 season, a one-semester walk-on, according to athletics director Carla Williams.

Over the past couple years, Jones had run into other legal trouble. He was arrested on Feb. 22, 2021, in Chesterfield County for a concealed weapons violation. He was convicted in that case in June 2021.

Jones also had outstanding warrants for hit-and-run property damage and reckless driving. He was sentenced to 12 months. But the sentence was suspended, Hingeley said Wednesday.

The mother of Michael Hollins, who was injured in the shooting, told CBS News that her son, a running back for the school's football team, has been asking about his friends — Davis, Chandler and Perry — who were on the bus and died from their gunshot wounds.

"He can't talk, but he has written D'Sean's name," Brenda Hollins told CBS News. "He has written Devin's name."

Hollins does not yet know three of his teammates died, his mother said.