3 University of Virginia football players shot dead, suspect arrested

Police arrested the suspect in the University of Virginia shooting that killed three members of the university's football team on Monday, hours after he opened fire on a bus full of students returning from a field trip.

The suspect, a student identified as Christopher Darnell Jones, was arrested hours after the shooting, which occurred at 10:30 p.m. Sunday local time (0330 GMT Monday) at the university in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he teaches, university police said at a news conference. 25 thousand students.

The shooting prompted university officials to tell students and staff to hunker down for hours as law enforcement officers conducted a massive manhunt for Jones.

University President Jim Ryan revealed the names of the students who died.

Authorities said two others were wounded in the shooting.

University Police Chief Tim Longo said Jones is being held on three counts of second-degree murder and three counts of using a handgun in the commission of a felony.

Ryan stated that Jones, a student at the university, has been registered as a player on the university's soccer team since 2018.

"Very sad," the university's president said in a message posted on social media hours after the shooting, adding that classes had been canceled for the day.

"This is a message any official would wish they had not had to send," he wrote in the letter, "and I am sad that the University of Virginia has been afflicted with such violence."

The shooting is the latest in a series of gun violence at US universities and high schools in recent years.

The bloodshed sparked a debate about tighter restrictions on gun ownership in the United States, where the Second Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms.

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