3 dead in shooting at University of Virginia; wanted suspect | National
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — A shooting outside a University of Virginia parking lot left three people dead and two others injured and police on Monday searching for a student suspect in the attack, officials said.
Classes at the university were canceled Monday after Sunday night’s violence, and the Charlottesville campus was unusually quiet as authorities searched for the suspect, identified by University of Virginia President Jim Ryan as Christopher Darnell Jones Jr.
U letter to the university posted on social media, Ryan said the shooting happened around 10:30 p.m. Sunday.
The university’s emergency management issued an alert Sunday night notifying the campus community of an “active firearm.” The message warned students to shelter in place after gunshots were reported on Culbreth Road on the north edge of campus.
On Monday morning, access to the scene of the shooting was blocked by police vehicles. Officials urged students to shelter in place, and helicopters could be heard overhead as traffic and dog walkers made their way around campus.
The UVA Police Department posted an online message saying several police agencies, including state police, were searching for the suspect, who is believed to be “armed and dangerous.”
In a letter to the campus, the university’s president said Jones was suspected of carrying out the shooting and that he was a student.
“This is a message that any leader hopes to never send, and I am devastated that this violence visited the University of Virginia,” Ryan wrote. “This is a traumatic incident for everyone in our community.”
Eva Suravelle, 21, editor-in-chief of the student newspaper The Cavalier Daily, said that after students received a report of an active shooter late Sunday night, she ran to the parking garage only to find it blocked off by police. When she got to a nearby intersection, she was told to take cover.
“The police officer told me that the shooter was nearby and I needed to get home as soon as possible,” she said.
She waited with the other reporters, hoping to get more details, then went back to her room to start working on the story. The seriousness of the situation has subsided.
“My generation definitely grew up with general gun violence, but it doesn’t make it any easier when it’s your own community,” she said.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said agents responded to the campus to assist in the investigation.
The Virginia shooting occurred during a police investigation the deaths of four Idaho State University students was found Sunday at a home near campus. Moscow police officers discovered the death when they responded to a report of an unconscious person just before noon, according to a city press release. Authorities have called the deaths suspicious homicides, but have not released additional details, including the cause of death.
On April 16, 2007, one of the bloodiest shootings in US history took place at another Virginia university. Twenty-seven students and five faculty members at Virginia Tech University were shot and killed by Seung-Hui Cho, a 23-year-old mentally ill student who later died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The story has been updated to correct that the state of emergency was issued Sunday evening.
The Associated Press News Research Center contributed to this report.
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