Members of the University of Virginia football team are “still in shock” as they try to process the death of three teammates in an on-campus shooting over the weekend, coach Tony Elliott said Tuesday.
“It feels like it’s a nightmare to be honest with you, and I’m ready for somebody to pinch me and wake me up and say that this didn’t happen,” Elliott, sitting alongside athletic director Carla Williams, told a news conference. “It’s been a long … I don’t know how long it’s been since it happened. The minutes can’t go by fast enough.”
Receivers Devin Chandler and Lavel Davis and linebacker D’Sean Perry were killed in Sunday’s shooting, which occurred on a bus full of students returning from a field trip to see a play in Washington, D.C. Elliott said he didn’t have enough information to provide an update on Mike Hollins, another football player who is in the hospital after being injured in the shooting. Another student, whose name has not been released by the school, was also taken to the hospital with injuries.
Police have arrested Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., who was previously a walk-on on the football team, in connection with the shooting. He has been charged with three counts of second-degree murder as well as three counts of using a handgun in the commission of a felony. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported Tuesday that Jones has also been charged with two counts of malicious wounding. He is scheduled to appear in court by video link Wednesday, according to the Times-Dispatch.
Williams said she had no details on what led to the incident and that she wouldn’t be able to speak to anything related to the ongoing criminal investigation. She had no update on whether Virginia would play its scheduled game against Coastal Carolina on Saturday.
“We’ll make (a decision) together. It will be a discussion with Coach and the team,” Williams said. “Obviously they’re going through a lot, and we want to make sure they’re involved as well. We’ll use our best judgment, but it will be soon. We’ll make a decision soon.”
Elliott said his focus “is not past today.”
“I’m just trying to figure out a way to get everybody back together this evening, so that we can see them again and spend some time,” he said. “In due time, we’ll collaborate on the path going forward in terms of on-the-field play.”
Elliott acknowledged the strength of players and staff as they “process what has taken place” and said players are “trying to rationalize but also finding encouragement in community with those that have come out in support and also those internally who have banded together to try and figure out how we move forward after going through a situation like this.”
Elliott described Davis as someone with a “big smile” who “lights up the room.”
“He’s got a gentleness about him, but he’s passionate about what he believes in,” Elliott said. “The other thing that resonated is just how good of a teammate he was and how much he loved his teammates and would do anything for his teammates.”
When speaking about Perry, Elliott shared that the linebacker was “very, very, very artistic.” He “could draw, could shape pots with clay, loved music, very very cultured and well-rounded. Just a great teammate. He had a sense of humor that was one of a kind.”
Elliott said Chandler was “what you wanted in a young person that’s at this level, but he just was a big kid. Smiled all the time, loved to dance, loved to sing, loved to compete even though the guys revealed that he wasn’t very good at video games but he thought he was.”
The receiver was “happy with where he was, comfortable in his skin and just had a very bubbly personality.”
Elliott said the first meeting with the team after the incident was “really, really tough. Really, really, really tough.”
Williams said the athletics department has three in-house psychologists and had counselors on-hand to meet with all student-athletes, not only football players, during the first meetings after the incident.
Elliott added that the program has tried to “transition from the pain to finding a little bit of joy in celebrating the lives of Lavel, D’Sean and Devin.”
“Nothing can prepare you for this situation, and we just want to be there to support the guys,” he said. “I think it’s important that we all grieve. These are outstanding young men that we don’t understand why they’re gone so early.”
(Photos of D’Sean Perry, Devin Chandler and Lavel Davis courtesy of the University of Virginia)
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‘Feels like it’s a nightmare’: Shooting death of teammates leaves Virginia football players ‘in shock’ - The Athletic
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