Slain University of Virginia football players

University of Virginia community members are mourning the sudden deaths of three football players who were killed in a shooting on Sunday night. Their deaths have left the community to suffer from “devastation and heartache,” UVA head football coach Tony Elliott said. 

College sophomore Devin Chandler, junior Lavel Davis Jr. and senior D’Sean Perry were killed in the shooting on a bus that was “full of students” returning from a field trip, officials said. They were also beloved members of the UVA football team, playing as wide receivers and linebacker, respectively. Two other students were injured in the shooting. 

The 22-year-old suspect in the shooting has since been arrested and charged with three counts of second-degree murder and three counts of using a handgun in the commission of a felony.

“These were incredible young men with huge aspirations and extremely bright futures. Our hearts ache for their families, their classmates and their friends,” Elliott said in a statement. “…We are all fortunate to have them be a part of our lives. They touched us, inspired us and worked incredibly hard as representatives of our program, university and community.”

University athletics director Carla Williams said in a statement that the community “lost three talented and bright young men.” 

“We will never see what their impact on the world would have been, but we will never forget their impact on us,” Williams said. 

University of Virginia associate professor of media studies and American studies Jack Hamilton says he taught Chandler in the spring and Davis this semester. He said he is “indescribably sad” in the wake of their deaths, and shared memories of the two students on Twitter. 

Chandler, he said, was a transfer student who was in Hamilton’s large lecture class, but would always make a point to go to Hamilton’s office for insight about life at UVA. Later, Hamilton helped him decide his major – American studies, “which he was really excited about.” 

“He was an unbelievably nice person, always a huge smile, really gregarious and funny,” Hamilton said. “One of those people who’s just impossible not to like. It is so sad and enraging that he is gone.” 

Davis, though quieter than Chandler in Hamilton’s experience, was equally as nice of a person, he said. 

“After our first day of class this semester, he made a point to come up and shake my hand and told me I should call him Vel,” Hamilton said. 

Chandler, or Vel, would “go out of his way” to make friends with students in the class who weren’t fellow athletes, Hamilton said, adding that he was struck by “how much his classmates liked him and vice versa.” 

“I am just stunned and devastated and completely at a loss but wanted to say all this because they were great people with truly limitless futures and they should still be here,” Hamilton said. “It breaks my heart.”