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 injured two students, an attorney representing some of the victims and their families said Friday.
The Charlottesville school will pay $2 million each to the families of the three students who died, the maximum amount allowed under Virginia law, said Kimberly Wald, an attorney with the Miami-based law firm Haggard.
Wald represents the estate of D’Sean Perry. The other two students who died were Devin Chandler and Lavel Davis Jr.
The university will pay a total of $3 million to the two injured students Mike Hollins, a fourth member of the football team, and Marlee Morgan, who also represents Wald.
The settlement was negotiated out of court and did not follow the filing of a lawsuit, Wald said. However, any settlement in Virginia must be approved by a judge. The settlement with UVA was accepted by a judge in Albemarle County Circuit Court on Friday afternoon.
The agreements were also approved by Virginia Governor Glenn Younkin and Attorney General Jason Miyares, the university said in a statement.
UVA Chancellor Robert Hardie and President Jim Ryan said in the statement that the lives of the three students were “tragically cut short” and that the young men “have always been in our thoughts.”
“We will forever remember the impact Devin, Lavel and D’Sean had on our community, and we are grateful for the moments they spent in our presence uplifting UVA through their time in the classroom and on the football field ” the statement said.
Police said Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., a UVA student and former member of the school’s football team, carried out the shooting. It happened as he and others returned to campus on a charter bus from a field trip to a play in Washington, authorities said.
The violence, which broke out near a parking garage, caused panic and a 12-hour lockdown of the campus until the suspect was arrested.
Within days of the shooting, university leaders requested an outside investigation to examine UVA’s security policies and procedures, its response to the violence and its past efforts to assess the potential threat posed by the student who was ultimately charged. School officials acknowledged that he was previously on the radar of the university’s threat assessment team.
The murder charges against Jones were upgraded from first-degree murder to aggravated murder in 2023. His trial is scheduled for January.
