Ex-University of Virginia student gets five life sentences for deaths of 3 football players

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.

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — 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, D.C. 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.