Three football players from the University of Virginia were killed in a shooting late Sunday as a bus returned to the school’s main campus in Charlottesville from a field trip, school officials said.
University of Virginia President Jim Ryan identified the three football players killed as Devin Chandler from Virginia Beach, Virginia, Lavel Davis Jr. from Ridgeville, South Carolina, and D’Sean Perry of Miami.
“This is an unimaginably sad day for our community,” said Ryan.
Lavel Davis Jr. was one of the top wide receivers for the Virginia Cavaliers this season. As a 6-foot-7-inch receiver, Davis was the team’s primary deep threat, with 16 catches for 371 yards and two touchdowns on the year, good for a stellar 23.2 yards per catch.
As a freshman in 2020, he had 20 catches for 515 yards and five touchdowns – an average of 25.75 yards per catch, second-best in the country – but missed the 2021 season due to injury.
In a May 2021 video on UVA Football’s Twitter, Davis said outside of class he enjoyed watching ’90s movies and reading Shakespeare plays and the Bible.
“Virginia is the perfect place for anybody who wants to work hard and be great,” he said. “At Virginia, it’s way bigger than football.”
A friend of the family created a GoFundMe campaign to help the family cover funeral expenses.
The parents of D’Sean Perry thanked the South Florida and Charlottesville communities for the support they’ve received since the shooting, according to their attorney Michael Haggard.
“On behalf of D’Sean’s parents, Happy and Sean Perry, and their entire family, we thank the South Florida and Charlottesville communities for the outpouring of support during this impossibly tragic time,” Haggard said in a statement to CNN.
In the statement, Perry’s parents also said they would not speak publicly about their son’s passing out of respect for the University of Virginia community, which “has been terrorized by another mass shooting in the United States.”
Perry, a junior, was a linebacker for Virginia who has played in 15 games over the last three seasons. On Saturday against Pittsburgh, he tallied two tackles in the 37-7 loss.
Devin Chandler, a junior, played as a wide receiver and kick returner for UVA who transferred this offseason from the University of Wisconsin. A suspect is in custody after three football players were killed and two other students were injured in a mass shooting at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville on Sunday night, authorities said.
The shooting took place on a bus full of students returning home from a class field trip to see a play in Washington, D.C., university officials said.
All three victims killed were on the football team, University of Virginia President Jim Ryan said at a news conference. The victims were identified as wide receivers Lavel Davis Jr. and Devin Chandler and linebacker D’Sean Perry.
The suspect, identified as student Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., was taken into custody Monday morning following an overnight manhunt, authorities announced.
Jones was a running back for the university’s football team in 2018, though he never played in a game. Gunter invited her friend Nicholas Lansing to shelter in her third-floor room, since his is on the ground floor.
“I have one locked door, but I also have a glass window that leads directly outside. So I’ve been up here on the third floor in Em’s room for the past three and a half hours,” Lansing, a University of Virginia junior, told ABC News via telephone.
The university’s president canceled classes for Monday and Tuesday.
“Our hearts remain broken at the senseless loss of three members of our University community, Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr., and D’Sean Perry,” Ryan said in a statement. “We are also monitoring the progress of two students who are in the excellent care of our medical center.”
