On the morning of Sunday Nov.13, three students, Devin Chandler, D’Sean Perry and Lavel Davis Jr. all tragically lost there lives at the University of Virginia campus. a student at the University of Virginia committed this crime. Christopher Darnell Jones Jr. was on the field trip with classmates when he stood up, pulled out a gun, and began firing.
Jones was a former football player for the school, attending a trip to watch a play in Washington D.C. with other active football players. Jones killed three students; all three were football players. He also injured two others: another football player and a student.
Senior football player Tevin Edgin had mixed feelings about the shooting. “I was obviously upset and surprised about the news, at the same time I feel like that’s the world we live in,” he said. The US has seen 17,887 murders and homicides during the current 2022 year, including 600 mass shootings, which amounts to at least two every day.
Many different images come to mind when people hear about a murder, but Jones was different. The former Virginia student was a football player for one year and a successful student. In high school, Jones was bullied for his academic brain. He made a name for himself for coming from a poor background and becoming a stellar athlete and student.
So what made him commit such a terrible crime?
PV sociology teacher Trever Zahn was surprised to hear the news of the shooting. He questions Jones’s reasons for leaving the football team and wondered if that played a role in the attack. “With issues of isolation, bullying, etc. that come up, it makes you wonder why this individual clearly targeted these fellow athletes and former teammates,” Zahn stated. It’s hard to tell exactly what motivated Jones, but Zahn thinks it could be associated with the Thomas Theorem.
The Thomas Theorem states: if men define a situation to be real, it is real in its consequences. In other words, someones interpretation of a event causes there actions. Zahn believes this could be the shooter’s motive behind the attack. “If he[Jones] felt they were harassing him, he was responding to that perceived harassment,” Zahn stated. If Jones left the football team on bad terms, he could have held a grudge on some of his former teammates and acted rashly in a fit of anger and rage.
It’s hard to know all the details of the University of Virginia shooting at this time, but the loss of these three young men’s lives is a horrible tragedy. The act of murder by the young student on his former teammates will effect the lives of families, friends and teammates indefinitely. As the school will be effected for years to come.
