Police have in custody a University of Virginia student and ex-UVA football player suspected of fatally shooting three current players and wounding two other people late Sunday at the school’s main campus in Charlottesville as a bus returned from a class field trip, school officials said. The suspect, Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., faces three charges of second-degree murder and three counts of using a handgun in the commission of a felony, UVA Police Chief Timothy Longo Sr. told reporters Monday morning as an hourslong manhunt came to an end and authorities lifted a campus lockdown order.
Jones was arrested without incident around 11 a.m. ET about 80 miles east of Charlottesville in Henrico County, the county police agency said in a statement. An officer spotted the vehicle Jones was driving in the eastern area of Henrico where he was “taken into custody without incident,” according to news release from the police division. One of the two injured students was identified as Michael Hollins, according to Andrew Martin, the head football coach at the University Lab School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
The attack happened Sunday on a bus returning from a class trip to Washington, DC, where the class had seen a play, university officials said. It was not immediately clear if Jones was part of that class or attended the field trip. Police responded to a report of shots fired around 10:30 p.m. in an area near a parking garage on Culbreth Road and surrounded by academic buildings, Ryan said. Two slain victims were inside the bus, with the third victim taken to a hospital, where he died, Longo said.
