The suspect and at least three of the victims in the shooting at the University of Virginia on Sunday night had links to the university’s football team.
The three students who were killed — Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr., and D’Sean Perry — were current players on the team. The suspect, Christopher Jones Jr., was a running back on the 2018 team, but he did not appear in any games and was not on the roster in subsequent seasons.
Davis Jr., a junior from South Carolina, was a starting wide receiver and the third-leading pass receiver on the team this season; he caught two touchdowns. Perry was a junior reserve linebacker from Florida who appeared in six of the team’s 10 games. Chandler was a junior wide receiver who transferred to Virginia from the University of Wisconsin and had yet to appear in a game for the ’Hoos, as the university’s sports teams are known informally.
Davis was also a member of the Groundskeepers, a group of Virginia football players who push for social change.
“These were incredible young men with huge aspirations and extremely bright futures,” the university’s first-year football coach, Tony Elliott, said in a statement. “Our hearts ache for their families, their classmates, and their friends.”
Under Elliott, a former offensive coordinator at Clemson, Virginia has a 3-7 record this season. Their most recent game was at home on Saturday, a loss to the University of Pittsburgh. There are two more games left in this season’s schedule: against Coastal Carolina next weekend and Virginia Tech on Nov. 2
As news of the shooting spread, Virginia’s rivals throughout the world of college football wrote to convey their condolences.
“I was shocked and saddened to hear of Devin’s passing,” said Wisconsin’s head coach, Jim Leonhard, who coached Chandler before he transferred to Virginia. “He had a lasting impact on his teammates, even after he left U.W., which is a testament to the type of person he was.”
Brent Pry, the coach at Virginia Tech, wrote on Twitter: “On behalf of our entire Virginia Tech football family … we are praying, sending sympathy and support to Coach Elliott, his staff, his team, their families, and the entire @UVA community.”
