CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — The University of Virginia will pay $9 million in a settlement related to a 2022 campus shooting that killed three football players and wounded two students, a lawyer representing some of the victims and their families said Friday.
The school in Charlottesville will pay $2 million each to the families of the three students who died, said Kimberly Wald, an attorney with the Miami-based Haggard Law firm, which represents the estate of D’Sean Perry. The other two students who died were Devin Chandler and Lavel Davis Jr.
Wald said the university will pay $3 million total to the two students who were wounded Mike Hollins, a fourth member of the football team, and Marlee Morgan.
Police said Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., a UVA student and former member of the school’s football team, carried out the shooting. It occurred when he and others had returned by charter bus to campus from a field trip to see a play in Washington, D.C., authorities said.
The violence that erupted near a parking garage set off panic and a 12-hour lockdown of the campus until the suspect was captured.
Within days of the shooting, university leaders 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.
Murder charges against Jones were upgraded in 2023 from second-degree murder to aggravated murder. His trial is scheduled for January.
