Miami high school football standout killed in University of Virginia mass shooting

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — A football standout from a Miami high school was one of the three University of Virginia football players killed Sunday night after a group of students returned from a school field trip.

D’Sean Perry, a junior and a linebacker at UVA who graduated from Gulliver Prep High School, was named the South Florida Conference’s 2018 Defensive Player of the Year, according to his school biography.

The suspect, another student and a former football player, was taken into custody Monday, more than 13 hours after he allegedly gunned down fellow students in a bus as they returned from the field trip, authorities said.

University President Jim Ryan and law enforcement officials were in the middle of a late morning news conference when they received word that Christopher Darnell Jones Jr. had been apprehended.

Two other students were wounded in the shooting late Sunday night, which happened near a campus parking garage as a charter bus full of students returned from seeing a play in Washington, D.C., for a class field trip. Ryan said one of the students was in critical condition and the other student was in good condition at a local hospital.

Ryan confirmed Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and Perry were killed, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported.

“Saddening, saddening news this morning,” Newberry College assistant coach Sean Lampkin tweeted Monday, according to the Times-Dispatch. “God took one of his most kind, humble, loving soldiers off of the battlefield last night. Please pray for my family as we are devastated by the passing of my cousin Lavel Davis Jr. Love and already miss you, kid.”

The Times-Dispatch reported that Davis’s father, Lavel Davis Sr., posted a message on Facebook that read: “Lord please help me.”

Davis, a 6-foot-7, 219-pound junior, was among the Cavaliers’ top receivers this season. He has missed the past two games with a concussion after playing in eight games. He caught 16 passes for 371 yards and two touchdowns.

Perry played in six games as a reserve.

Classes at the school were canceled Monday, a day after the shooting. Monday night’s basketball game against Northern Iowa has been canceled, UVA’s president announced.

Access to the shooting scene was blocked by police vehicles Monday morning. Officials urged students to shelter in place and helicopters could be heard overhead as a smattering of traffic and dog-walkers made their way around campus.

In his letter to campus, the university president said Jones was suspected to have committed the shooting and that he was a student.

In his letter to campus, the university president wrote: “This is a message any leader hopes never to have to send, and I am devastated that this violence has visited the University of Virginia. This is a traumatic incident for everyone in our community.”

The university’s emergency management Twitter account said shortly before 7 a.m. Monday that “a complete search on and around UVA Grounds” by law enforcement was underway and urged people on campus to remain sheltered. Around 10:30 a.m., a text message from the university was sent saying the shelter in place notice has been lifted “based on a thorough search on and around Grounds.” A large police presence will remain on campus.

Eva Surovell, 21, the editor in chief of the student newspaper, The Cavalier Daily, said that after students received an alert about an active shooter late Sunday night, she ran to the parking garage, but saw that it was blocked off by police. When she went to a nearby intersection, she was told to go shelter in place.

“A police officer told me that the shooter was nearby and I needed to return home as soon as possible,” she said.

She waited with other reporters, hoping to get additional details, then returned to her room to start working on the story. The gravity of the situation sunk in.

“My generation is certainly one that’s grown up with generalized gun violence, but that doesn’t make it any easier when it’s your own community,” she said.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said agents were responding to the campus to assist in the investigation.

The Virginia shooting came as police were investigating the deaths of four University of Idaho students found Sunday in a home near the campus. Officers with the Moscow Police Department discovered the deaths when they responded to a report of an unconscious person just before noon, according to a news release from the city. Authorities have called the deaths suspected homicides but did not release additional details, including the cause of death.

On April 16, 2007, another Virginia university was the scene of what was then one of the deadliest shootings in U.S. history. Twenty-seven students and five faculty members at Virginia Tech were gunned down by Seung-Hui Cho, a 23-year-old mentally ill student who later died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Jami Frankenberry contributed to this report, which was supplemented by South Florida Sun Sentinel wire services.

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