One of the UVA shooting victims was a Hough High grad. He was ‘a great young man’
One of the three college students killed in a shooting at the University of Virginia Sunday was Devin Chandler, a former Huntersville resident and Hough High School graduate, local police said on Monday morning.
Chandler was a junior at the university in Charlottesville, Va., and played varsity football for the school. The others who died also were on the team.
Chandler’s former coach at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district recalled Chandler as someone with great energy “and an infectious smile” who was a joy to coach.
Chandler’s death was confirmed by the school’s president, Jim Ryan, in a news conference on Monday morning. The shooting occurred Sunday night on a charter bus that had just returned from a field trip to see a play in Washington, D.C., officials said. Two other people were wounded in the shooting.
“This is a sad, shocking and tragic day for our U.Va. community,” Ryan said.
The suspect, fellow student Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., is in custody, authorities said. He had been among the two dozen students who went on the bus trip, The Washington Post reported.
No motive for the deadly violence has emerged yet.
Victim was ‘wonderful student with infectious smile’
Hough High football coach Matt Jenkins said he had been on the phone with players and their parents all morning. He was in tears as he spoke to The Charlotte Observer Monday morning.
“Devin was a great kid, you know,” Jenkins said. “He was a great young man. He was a joy to coach and he had an infectious smile. He brought great energy every day. He was a wonderful student and he was a heck of a football player, but that’s the least important of all of them.
“He’ll be missed. He was going to make this place better.”
“It’s hard on us,” Jenkins said. “Devin is old enough that the majority of the team didn’t really know him... So it may be harder on his coaches than on the kids even.
“It’s just tough when you put as much time in it as you do and you get invested in young men, these people, as much as you do,” Jenkins added. “It’s hard when they get taken earlier than they should.”
Hough and Jenkins got the news just a few days before Hough plays a third-round playoff game at unbeaten East Forsyth Friday.
At a news conference at the Hough football field Monday afternoon, Jenkins told reporters he’d remember Chandler for being the kind of player who would see his teammate score and sprint “down the field from 50 yards, waving his arms everywhere,” celebrating for his teammates “as if he was the one who scored.”
Senior quarterback Tad Hudson was a freshman when Chandler played his only season at Hough, and shared a story with reporters.
“Freshman year, our starting quarterback went down, and Devin was one of the first players to come up to me and say, ‘Hey man, you got this, I believe in you, let’s go out and rock out and have some fun,’ ” Hudson said.
“He always put a smile on everybody’s face, always danced in the locker room,” Hudson added. “Made everybody feel like family.”
The Hough High School football team’s Twitter account wrote in a statement on Monday: “RIP to one of our own, Devin Chandler. It saddens us to have to write this, but sending healing energy and prayers to his family.”
On Monday afternoon, The White House released a statement on behalf of President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden, sending their condolences to the victims’ family and friends.
About Devin Chandler
Chandler started his high school football career at Arlington High School in Tennessee, where he played wide receiver and defensive back, according to his biography on the Virginia athletics website. He transferred to Hough, right outside of Charlotte, for his senior season in 2019.
As a senior, Chandler was among the best receivers in North Carolina.
He recorded 50 catches for 905 yards and 14 touchdowns en route to earning first-team all-conference honors.
Chandler signed to play football at Wisconsin out of high school, and then he transferred to Virginia ahead of the 2022 season. He had recently been living in Virginia Beach, Virginia, school officials said.
One of Chandler’s professors at U.Va., Jack Hamilton, took to Twitter Monday to praise his former American studies student, as well as one of the other victims he had taught, Lavel Davis Jr.
Chandler, he said, “was an unbelievably nice person, always a huge smile, really gregarious and funny. one of those people who’s just impossible not to like. it is so sad and enraging that he is gone.”
Then referring to the loss of both of the young men, Hamilton added, “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.”
Shock and pain over UVA killings
All three people who were killed Sunday night were on the football team.
Davis, originally from Ridgeville, South Carolina, was a wide receiver at Woodland High School in Dorchester County, about 50 minutes northwest of Charleston. D’Sean Perry was a Miami native.
Jones, the shooting suspect, is a former Virginia walk-on who wasn’t a member of the football team this season.
Jones was caught Monday morning after a manhunt that lasted more than 12 hours, according to UVA Emergency Management. He was taken into custody without incident in a Richmond, Virginia, suburb, just before 11 a.m. Monday, The New York Times reported.
The shooting occurred around 10:30 p.m. Sunday, officials said, on a bus full of students returning from a field trip to see a play. The university has not released the names of the two students who were wounded in the shooting.
As word of the killings quickly spread, parents, students and alumni took to social media to express their shock and grief.
Some people took to Chandler’s own social media accounts to express sympathy. Back in March, he posted a picture of himself on Instagram in his football uniform, and said, “Talk to God everyday and He tells me to keep working.”
One person commented Monday afternoon,” No one deserves a life taken this short. Rest in love and power man.”
Over on Twitter, a dad said his daughter reached out to him to say she takes an American studies class with Chandler.
“ ‘Dad, he’s awesome. He always walks into class smiling and cracking jokes,’ “ Alex Inman wrote on Twitter. “She’s talking in present tense. What class, you ask? “Non-Violence in America.”
Observer editor Adam Bell contributed to this report
This story was originally published November 14, 2022 at 12:21 PM with the headline "One of the UVA shooting victims was a Hough High grad. He was ‘a great young man’."
