A survivor of the University of Virginia shooting that claimed the lives of three and left two injured does not know that his friends are dead, his mother said.
Brenda Hollins, mother of Mike Hollins, said that her son, who is in critical but stable condition, has been using a pen and paper to ask about his friends.
“He can’t talk, but he has written D’Sean’s name,” she said in an interview with CBS News. “He has written Devin’s name. And then I believe it was an L — I don’t know what he was writing at the bottom, but he was taking the marker and beating on it because he wants to know.”
SHOOTING SUSPECT CHRISTOPHER DARNELL JONES JR. IS A FORMER UVA FOOTBALL PLAYER: POLICE
Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr., and D’Sean Perry, all University of Virginia football players, were killed in the shooting on a bus as it pulled into a campus garage on Sunday night. They were returning from a field trip to see a play in Washington, D.C., according to the university.
Hollins, who originally made it safely off the bus, was shot in the back when he went back to help his friends, Brenda Hollins said she was told.
“So, that’s my baby. I could absolutely see him doing that,” Brenda Hollins said.
She said Mike is in critical but stable condition after the bullet entered his back and exited through his stomach. He needed two surgeries, she said.
“It’s the call that you never want to get,” she said. “You hear other people receiving [those calls], and you hope and pray that you never get it. But when you do, your world stops.”
A suspect, former UVA football player Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., was aboard the bus at the time of the shooting. He was arrested off the university’s main campus on Monday after being on the run for over 12 hours.
Virginia Police Department Chief Timothy Longo Sr. was informed that Jones was in custody during a news conference on Monday.
“Just give me a moment to thank God [and] breathe a sigh of relief,” Longo said upon hearing of Jones’s arrest.
Brenda Hollins said she is praying for Jones and his family, saying that they, too, are victims.
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“It’s hard to not be angry,” she said. “But I’m working through that. … I pray for them. … His family, they’re victims also. I pray for them and I’m working through forgiveness. Because we have to, we have to forgive.”
Jones could be arraigned as early as Wednesday on murder charges, and he may face additional federal charges if he brought the gun into Washington, D.C., on the field trip. No motive has been given for the shooting.
