CHARLOTTESVILLE — A witness told police that University of Virginia shooting suspect Christopher Darnell Jones targeted specific people when he opened fire on a charter bus returning from a field trip Sunday night, a prosecutor said in court Wednesday. One of the three dead, Devin Chandler, was shot while he slept, Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney James Hingley said during a hearing in Charlottesville. Also killed were Lavel Davis Jr and D’Sean Perry. All three played for the varsity football team. Jones, 22, appeared via video for his first court appearance, where Judge Andrew Sneathern ordered him held without bail. He was charged with second-degree murder, two counts of malicious wounding and five counts of weapons. He did not address or speak during the hearing except to answer questions from the judge.

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Devin Chandler (from left), Lavel Davis Jr. and D’Sean Perry were killed in a shooting Sunday. University of Virginia Athletics via AP Jones, who was on the team in 2018, was arrested in Henrico County after a manhunt that shut down the campus for more than 12 hours. He previously lived in Petersburg, although officials have not said what brought him to the Richmond area. Authorities have not released details on a possible motive. Hingley on Wednesday briefly described the police account of what happened on the bus, which had taken the students to a play production in Washington, D.C. Hingley said police responded to a report of shots fired about 10:30 p.m. near a parking garage on Culbreth Road and found Chandler and Perry dead in the bus. Davis died at the hospital, he said. Jones Football player Michael Hollins and student Marlee Morgan were also injured in the shooting. A witness told police that Jones was “targeting certain people,” Hingley said. It is not clear who the witness is being referred to in court. UVa student Ryan Lynch told The Washington Post on Tuesday that she was on the bus for a class field trip focused on African-American playwrights. She said Jones was not in class but had the professor for another class and was invited to take part in the trip to Washington, according to The Post. Leeds described Jones as keeping to himself much of the day — sitting apart from the team while at the game and remaining largely quiet on the bus ride. University of Virginia President Jim Ryan spoke Monday during a news conference about the shooting that killed three students and wounded two. Eva Russo/times-dispatch At a press conference outside the courthouse after the hearing, Hingeley said the investigation is ongoing. He cited the ongoing investigation as the reason he could not comment publicly on the case. “Sir. Jones is presumed innocent and at some point in the future, we will have a trial,” Hingley said. Under a cloud of mourning, the university resumed classes on Wednesday. It was also announced Wednesday that Virginia will not play its game scheduled for Saturday against Coastal Carolina. UVa will conduct an external review of its botched investigation into the suspect, President Jim Ryan said Wednesday night in a video message. A day earlier, a university spokesman said the school never reported the suspected gunman to the school’s judicial committee. U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., urged university and state officials Wednesday to convene an independent panel of experts to review every aspect of Sunday’s fatal shooting of three members of the university’s football team, as he did as governor after a student of Virginia Tech killed 32 students and faculty and injured 17 others before killing himself on April 16, 2007. The Virginia Technical Review Commission, headed by retired Virginia State Police Superintendent Gerald Massengill, issued a scathing report four months after the massacre with conclusions about how the incident was handled and flaws that needed to be fixed, particularly in the laws governing the treatment of mentally disordered persons. disease and firearms purchases. Cain said he refrained from “jumping to conclusions until the evaluation is done” and recommended UVa and state leaders take the same approach. “Let’s put all the facts on the table and then I think that will tell us the direction we need to go to make improvements,” he said at a news briefing on Wednesday. Hon Kaine Kane agreed that any review take an independent look at what he called “warning signs or red flags” that could alert the university to danger in Jones’ behavior, including a reported hazing incident, a concealed weapons violation and a pending disciplinary investigation of the students. She said leaders should “embrace an ethos of ‘we want to get to the bottom of it’” and appoint members to the review committee who are independent from UV and the families of the students who were shot to ensure that its recommendations are carried out accepted as unbiased. Kaine, who called the Virginia Tech shooting “the worst day of my life,” also acknowledged the lingering trauma from that shooting and others, including the fatal shooting of a Roanoke television reporter and photojournalist during a live interview in the air in 2015 at Smith Mountain Lake. “In Virginia, we have a lot of scar tissue for that,” he said, also noting “daily” shootings and violence in Richmond and other communities. “Each one is its own tragedy, but each one reopens a wound that really never heals,” Kaine said, “a wound made up of all the past tragedies that we’ve experienced in the commonwealth and the country. .” Jones’ next court appearance is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. on December 8.

        Crowds gather in Charlottesville for vigil for 3 students killed in campus shooting

Jenna Hughes, of Hanover, Va., shares a moment with Brian Stanmeyer, of Vienna, Va., as they gather for a candlelight vigil after a shooting that left three students dead on Monday, Nov. 14, 2022, in Charlottesville of Virginia. SHABAN ATHUMAN/TIMES-MISSION Students and community members gather for a candlelight vigil after a shooting that left three students dead on Monday, Nov. 14, 2022, in Charlottesville, Virginia. …