The University of Virginia will pay $9 million in a settlement related to a 2022 on-campus shooting that killed three football players and injured two students, lawyers representing some of the victims and their families announced Friday.
Kimberly Wald, an attorney with Miami-based Haggard Law Firm, said the Charlottesville school will pay $2 million to each of the families of the three students who died, the maximum allowed under Virginia law.
Wald represents the heirs of DeSean Perry. The other two students who died were Devin Chandler and LaVell Davis Jr.
The university will pay a total of $3 million to the two injured students, a fourth member of the football team, Mike Hollins, and Marley Morgan, who is represented by Waldo.
Wald said the settlement was negotiated out of court and not after a lawsuit was filed. But all settlements in Virginia must be approved by a judge. The University of Virginia settlement was approved by an Albemarle County Circuit Court judge on Friday afternoon.
The university said in a statement that the agreement has also been approved by Virginia Governor Glenn Younkin and the state's Attorney General Jason Miyares.
University of Virginia President Robert Hardy and Chancellor Jim Ryan said in a statement that the lives of the three students were “tragically cut short” and that “they will always be in our hearts.”
“We will never forget the impact Devin, LaBelle and DeShawn had on our community, and we are grateful for the ways they stood before us in the classroom, on the football field and uplifted the University of Virginia,” the statement said.
Police say the shooter is University of Virginia student and former football team member Christopher Darnell Jones Jr. The incident happened as Jones and his group were returning to campus on a charter bus from a field trip to Washington to see a play.
The violence, which broke out near a parking lot, sparked panic and led to the campus being locked down for 12 hours until a suspect was arrested.
In the days after the shooting, university officials requested an outside review of the University of Virginia's safety policies and procedures, its response to violent incidents, and its efforts to evaluate the potential threat posed by the student who was ultimately charged. University officials acknowledged that the student had previously been under the watch of the university's threat assessment team.
The murder charge against Jones was upgraded from second-degree murder to aggravated murder in 2023. His trial is scheduled for January.
