U-Va. campus rattled by killing of three students, charges against another

Thousands of students gathered on U-Va.’s South Lawn Monday evening for a vigil honoring the three young men who had been shot and killed on campus 24 hours earlier.

Encircling the grassy field, they stood silently. All that could be heard was the sound of plastic candles sliding across a row of tables, as one by one each student grabbed an orange light.

At once, students walked into the center of the lawn and sat down, filling the space. They paused in complete quiet for 15 minutes. They put heads in their hands or on their neighbors; not one person was seen using their phones.

Players were in shock late Monday morning as Virginia football coach Tony Elliott addressed them in a team meeting at the football facility at approximately 10:45 a.m., shortly after the shelter-in-place order had been lifted and before authorities named the victims.

The Cavaliers have two games left this season, with the finale against heated rival Virginia Tech scheduled for Nov. 26 at Lane Stadium in Blacksburg, Va. It remains unclear if the game will be played as scheduled, and the topic was not discussed during Monday’s team meeting, according to a person who attended the meeting and spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly.

Lavel Davis Jr. was tall and fast — a dynamic playmaker with a flair for breaking open games with acrobatic catches resulting in long gains.

The 20-year-old from Dorchester County, S.C. — an occasional starter at wide receiver — missed all of last season with a torn ACL suffered during spring practice. This year, he was trying to show the team the path to victory — and inspire others.

“Looking from the outside in last year made me appreciate the leaders on the team,” Davis told reporters on the first day of training camp over the summer. “I’m trying to be one of those leaders. When things are going bad, even though it’s hard, try to pump positivity out. Try to say: ‘Let’s keep going, guys. We got this.’ ”

The University of Virginia’s threat assessment team started scrutinizing Christopher Darnell Jones Jr. after a student reported Sept. 15 that he had heard Jones make a comment about possessing a gun, a university spokesman said Monday.

U-Va. spokesman Brian Coy said the tip came as part of an investigation into a separate hazing allegation.

Coy, in a statement elaborating on remarks that U-Va. Police Chief Timothy J. Longo Sr. made at an earlier news conference Monday, said the tipster did not tell the university he saw Jones with a gun. Nor was there a specific threat associated with the gun-possession report. U-Va. officials also reached out to Jones’s roommate and heard nothing from him about seeing a gun.

D’Sean Perry, a linebacker and studio art major from Miami, cited a passage from the Bible on his Instagram page — Philippians 4:6, sometimes translated as, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.”

On Twitter, he displayed a painting of a congregation with celebrants’ arms raised. One recent message he retweeted read: “I want my whole squad to succeed. Not just me. All of us.”

Earl Sims, the head football coach at Gulliver Preparatory School, which Perry attended from eighth to 12th grade, said in a written statement Monday that Perry “was an amazing soul that made his family and community proud.”

The shooting in the University of Virginia in Charlottesville that left three people dead was one of nine mass shootings in the nation over the weekend, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

The U-Va. attack left three members of the football team dead and two other students injured, police said, and comes nearly six months after a rampage at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., left 19 children and two teachers dead on May 24. Since then, there have been 385 mass shootings across the country and nearly 600 mass shootings so far this year.

Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh began his weekly news conference Monday speaking about how difficult the past day has been for center Olu Oluwatimi, who played for the Cavaliers from 2019 through 2021 before transferring to Michigan.

“A piece of my heart goes out to those who tragically lost their lives at the University of Virginia today,” Harbaugh said. “Our football program extends our deepest sympathies to the families of those who were killed and those who were shot. Also to the Virginia football program and the university. Few words can express our sympathy at a time like this, but we’re going to help and support our players.”

On Monday afternoon, as more details emerged about the shooting that had shuttered campus the night before, a group of fraternity brothers squatted and knelt around a white sheet in the parking lot of their Phi Kappa Psi house.

“I like what you’re doing here,” one brother said as another dragged an orange paintbrush along a blue “V.”

The second-year students stayed out in the cold until their message, in orange and blue letters, was finished: “VIRGINIA STRONG.”

They fastened it across the top of their house.