Suspect caught in fatal shooting of 3 U.Va. football players

CHARLOTTES-VILLE, Va. — A University of Virginia student and former member of the school’s football team fatally shot three current players as they returned from a field trip, authorities said, setting off panic and a 12-hour lockdown of the campus until the suspect was captured Monday.

Students who were told to shelter in place beginning late Sunday described terrifying hours in hiding. While police searched for the gunman through the night, students sought safety in closets, dorm rooms, libraries and apartments. They listened to police scanners and tried to remember everything they were taught as children during active-shooter drills.

“I think all of us were just really unsettled and trying to keep, you know, our cool and level heads during the situation,” student Shannon Lake said.

Officials got word during a morning news briefing that the suspect, 22-year-old Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., had been arrested.

“Just give me a moment to thank God, breathe a sigh of relief,” university Police Chief Timothy Longo Sr. said after learning Jones was in custody.

The violence erupted near a parking garage just after 10:15 p.m. Sunday as a charter bus full of students returned to Charlottesville from seeing a play in Washington.

University President Jim Ryan said authorities did not have a “full understanding” of the motive or circumstances of the shooting.

“The entire university community is grieving this morning,” Ryan said.

Lake, a third-year student from Crozet, Virginia, ended up spending the night with friends in a lab room, much of the time in a storage closet.

Elizabeth Paul, a student from northern Virginia, was working at a computer in the library when she got a call from her mom, who had received word about the shooting.

Paul said she initially brushed off any concern, thinking it was probably something minor. She realized she needed to take it seriously when her computer lit up with a warning about an active shooter.

Paul said she stayed huddled with others in the library. She spent most of the night on the phone with her mom.

“Not even talking to her the whole time necessarily, but she wanted the line to be on so that if I needed something she was there,” she said.