Police launched a huge manhunt on Sunday night after three people were killed and two more injured in a shooting at the University of Virginia, with officials ordering students and locals to shelter in place.
Cops are still looking for the 22-year-old ‘armed and dangerous’ suspect believed to have opened fire in a parking garage at around 10:15 p.m. Sunday, with the search involving helicopters continuing into Monday morning.
Christopher Darnell Jones, reported to be a former football player, is described by police in Charlottesville as a black male wearing blue jeans, a burgundy jacket and red shoes. He could be driving a black SUV, with the license TWX3580, police said.
Students on campus described hearing gunshots ringing out. The UVA emergency management account tweeted at 10:42pm on Sunday: ‘UVA Alert: ACTIVE ATTACKER firearm reported in area of Culbreth Road. RUN HIDE FIGHT’.
The ‘run, hide, fight’ message refers to active shooter training, in which people are encouraged to run if they can run, hide if they can’t run, and fight as a final resort.
As of 6 a.m. Monday, the search was still on, and involved multiple police department agencies.
The University of Virginia’s main campus has been put into lockdown, with law enforcement saying it was conducting a ‘complete’ search of the campus.
University of Virginia’s President James E. Ryan confirmed the casualties in a message to the community at around 4 a.m, saying he was ‘heartbroken to report’ that three people had been killed in the shooting.
He said authorities were working closely with their families. Concerned families and friends have been encouraged to contact the university on a special hotline.
UVa police department also confirmed the three fatalities and two injuries. Officials are yet to identify the victims or say whether they were students of the university.
University of Virginia police named the suspect in Sunday’s shooting as Christopher Darnell Jones, pictured
A police car is seen on the University of Virginia campus on Sunday night
Pictured: Culbreth Road parking garage on University of Virginia’s main campus
Pictured: An aerial view of the Culbreth Road parking garage on the university campus
The UVA emergency account later Tweeted that multiple police departments were actively searching for the suspect, including a Virginia state police helicopter. The follow-up message reiterated that the suspect was armed and dangerous.
‘As of this writing, I am heartbroken to report that the shooting has resulted in three fatalities; two additional victims were injured and are receiving medical care,’ President Ryan’s message said. ‘We are working closely with the families of the victims, and we will share additional detail as soon as we are able.
‘Our University Police Department has joined forces with other law enforcement agencies to apprehend the suspect, and we will keep our community apprised of developments as the situation evolves,’ he added.
Earlier, Ryan tweeted: ‘There has been a shooting on Culbreth Road and the suspect is at large and considered armed and dangerous.’
He asked the community to follow the UVA emergency Twitter account for updated alerts and for the community to shelter in place.
The university’s vice president and chief student affairs officer Robyn S. Hadley told students to ‘take the shelter in place commands seriously as the situation remains active’ in an email to UVA’s students.
‘We have all received several shelter in place texts, and they are frightening. I am on grounds like many of you; I am sheltering in place and in direct touch with University leadership and UPD … If you are not inside and safe, immediately seek safety.’
Students are being urged to get in touch with their families and friends and let them know they are safe. University of Virginia has set up a hotline for them to contact.
UVa sophomore Em Gunter, 19, told the Times-Dispatch that she was in her International Residential College dormitory when she heard six shots ring out. She said she can see Culbreth Road from her window.
She messaged the other 350 students in the building and told them to stay inside, and she hid inside her room with friends. They were all terrified, Gunter said.
‘I just have no words,’ Gunter told the Dispatch. ‘This is insane.’ She told the outlet that she was living in South Virginia in 2007, where the Virginia Tech mass shooting took place – and remains in people’s minds.
The Culbreth Road parking garage sits on University’s main campus, and is little over 1,000 feet from Madison Hall, the university president’s office, and around 1,500 feet from The Rotunda, an iconic building designed by Thomas Jefferson.
Suspect Jones, one of four children, is originally from Petersburg, Virginia, according to his profile on VirginiaSports.com. He studied for three years at Varina High School, and spent his senior year at Petersburg High School.
Jones is seen in a photo shared on social media. Police are searching for him in connection with a shooting on campus on Sunday night in Charlottesville, Virginia
His profile describes him in glowing terms: Jones was a member of the National Honor Society, and the National Technical Honor Society, who served as president of Key Club – a society for volunteering in the community.
‘High school student members of Key Club perform acts of service in their communities, such as cleaning up parks, collecting clothing and organizing food drives,’ the website states.
‘They also learn leadership skills by running meetings, planning projects and holding elected leadership positions at the club, district and international levels.’
Jones was also president of Jobs for Virginia Grads Program, and named Student of the Year as a freshman and sophomore at Varina, the site says.
Students at the university were all sent an email on Sunday night, telling them to shelter in place.
UVa asked family and friends with questions and concerns over the incident to call an emergency hotline at (877) 685-4836.
The shooting is the latest in a wave of gun violence on U.S. college and high school campuses in recent years.
The bloodshed has fuelled the debate over tighter restrictions on access to guns in the United States, where the Second Amendment of the Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms.
Sunday night’s shooting is not the first to have rocked a Virginia college campus this year. In February, two campus police officers were shot and killed as they responded to reports of a ‘suspicious man’ near a building housing classrooms.
The suspect in the shooting was a former student.
In that same month, a late-night shooting at a hookah bar near Virginia Tech’s campus left one dead and four injured.
On April 16 2007, Virgina Tech was the site of one of the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, when 23-year-old undergraduate Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people and injured 17 others before turning the gun on himself.
Cho, from South Korea, used two semi-automatic pistols in the mass killings.
Meanwhile, police in the state of Idaho were investigating a separate incident Monday in which four students were found dead in a home near another university campus, believed to be ‘the victims of homicide.’
Officers responded to a call in the town of Moscow, near the campus of the University of Idaho, about an unconscious individual. ‘Upon arrival, officers discovered four individuals who were deceased,’ police said in a statement.
‘It is with deep sadness that I share with you that the university was notified today of the death of four University of Idaho students living off-campus believed to be victims of homicide,’ University of Idaho president Scott Green said in a statement.