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CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — A former University of Virginia student pleaded guilty Wednesday to fatally shooting three football players and wounding two other students on the Charlottesville campus in 2022.
Christopher Darnell Jones, Jr., 25, pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder, two counts of aggravated malicious wounding and five counts of use of a firearm in the commission of a felony.
Jones' trial on murder charges and other counts have been scheduled for January, and a four-day sentencing hearing is scheduled to begin Feb. 4 in Albemarle County Circuit Court.
Authorities said that Jones, a former member of the football team, opened fire on a charter bus as he and other students arrived back on campus after seeing a play and having dinner together in Washington, D.C.
Authorities had not released a motive, but a witness told police that he had targeted specific victims.
Football players Lavel Davis Jr., D'Sean Perry and Devin Chandler were killed, while a fourth member of the team, Mike Hollins, who later returned to play in 2023, and another student, Marlee Morgan, were wounded.
The shooting erupted near a parking garage and set off panic and a 12-hour lockdown of the campus until the suspect was captured. In the wake of the shooting, Virginia canceled its final two games against Coastal Carolina and archrival Virginia Tech, and the NCAA granted the players an extra year of eligibility.
In June, a lawyer representing some of the victims and their families had announced that the university had agreed to pay $9 million in a settlement.
Kimberly Wald said at the time that the school would pay $2 million each to the families of the three students who died, the maximum allowable under Virginia law. The school would also pay $3 million total to the two students who were wounded.
Following the settlement, some of the families had also called for the immediate release of an independent probe into the shooting, which was completed last year.
University officials said they had postponed the report's release last year over concerns that it could affect the upcoming trial.
Within days of the shooting, university leaders had asked for an outside review to investigate UVA's safety policies and procedures, its response to the violence and its prior efforts to assess the potential threat of the student who was eventually charged. School officials acknowledged he previously had been on the radar of the university's threat-assessment team.
Wald had said the university should have removed Jones from campus before the attack because he displayed multiple red flags through erratic and unstable behavior.
