RICHMOND, Va. (WAVY) — Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares has finished an external review of what led to the November 2022 shooting deaths of three students and injuries to two others at the University of Virginia.
The review came at the request of the university and its board of visitors. Miyares sent a report of the review to UVA. That report, he said, will not be released to the public.
The Nov. 13, 2022 shooting deaths of the three students — Devin Chandler, D’Sean Perry and Lavel Davis Jr, all members of the UVA football team — shook the campus and the university community. The two injured included Mike Hollins, who returned to the Cavaliers’ football team this fall, and Marlee Morgan.
Chandler was a second-year student from Virginia Beach, Perry a fourth-year student from Miami and Davis a third-year student from South Carolina. Each died from a gunshot wound to the head, according to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
Four days later, UVA president James E. Ryan and then-Board of Visitors Rector Whittington W. Clement asked that Miyares appoint outside counsel to conduct an independent review of the university’s response to the shooting, efforts to assess the potential threat of the shooter, and the school’s safety policies and procedures.
“The deaths of Devin Chandler, D’Sean Perry, and Lavel Davis Jr. are a tremendous tragedy and we continue to remember them, their families, and what they meant to the UVA community,” Miyares said in a statement. “My office, thanks to the work of the special counsels, has procured a thorough report of last fall’s tragic events, and I am thankful for their deliberate efforts.”
The suspect, Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., 22, who was a UVA student, was taken into custody after a more than 12-hour manhunt.
After first being charged with second-degree murder in the shooting deaths of the three students, a special grand jury issued 13 new indictments against Jones Sept. 6, months after it was formed to review evidence in the case. Those indictments included six counts of aggravated murder — the most severe murder charge in Virginia — and aggravated malicious wounding charges in the shooting of Hollins and Morgan.
In Virginia, aggravated murder is a Class 1 felony and comes with a mandatory life sentence.
Miyares said that attorney-client ethical rules “prohibit the Office of the Attorney General from sharing the report with the public.”
The attorney general appointed national law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP as special counsel to review events leading to the shooting. He also appointed Zachary Terwilliger, former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, to review law enforcement issues at all levels — federal, state and local — related to the incident.