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| Photo Credit: AP. |
Police arrested a suspect Monday following a shooting incidence that left three persons dead at the University of Virginia. The shooting is said to have taken place in a bus some students were traveling as they returned from a school field trip.
On Sunday night the shooter allegedly opened fired on fellow students leaving two persons injured, one critically.
The shooting
happened near a campus parking garage as the University of Virginia (UVA)
football team returned from a football game in Washington, D.C.
Authorities
identified the suspect as 22-year-old UVA student Christopher Darnell Jones,
Jr.
University
of Virginia Police Department Chief Timothy Longo Sr. said Jones has been
charged with three counts of second-degree murder, and three counts of using a
firearm in the commission of a felony. Longo indicated that two students on the
charter bus were pronounced dead while the third student died at a local
hospital.
At a press
conference University of Virginia President Jim Ryan said it was an “extraordinarily
difficult day for our community, and we need to comfort and support each other
and those closest to the victims of this horrendous shooting.”
Ryan noted
that UVA police responded to a report of shots fired at roughly 10:30 p.m. on
Sunday evening around a parking garage on Culbreth Road.
Ryan
identified football players killed in the encounter as second-year student
Devin Chandler from Virginia Beach, Va,; fourth-year student D’Sean Perry from
Miami and third year student Lavel Davis from Ridgeville, S.C.
The suspect
was arrested after 12 hours of manhunt.
Longo
described the shooting as “very tragic circumstances for our university
community.”
Two victims
are still being treated at a hospital.