The University of Virginia is now committing to a mid-March public release of the external review into the Nov. 13, 2022, mass shooting that killed three UVA Football players.
Given the history of promises from UVA toward transparency with respect to that external review, which has now been in the hands of school officials for 16 months, yeah, don’t hold your breath.
“The University is preparing to release the final redacted reports to the public by mid-March,” UVA spokesman Brian Coy wrote in a statement posted online on Wednesday.
“UVA has shared the reports with the families of Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and D’Sean Perry, and Michael Hollins Jr. and Marlee Morgan, two students who were seriously injured. Once victims and families of the deceased have had the opportunity to read the reports and meet with University officials, the University will then make the reports available to the general public,” Coy said.
Uh, huh.
Background
To refresh our memories on this awful episode, the Nov. 13, 2022, mass shooting that took the lives of Chandler, Davis and Perry came at the end of a day-long theater class field trip to Washington, D.C.
One of the students on the trip, Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., pleaded guilty this past Nov. 20 to three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Chandler, Davis and Perry, and malicious-wounding charges in connection with the shootings of Hollins and Morgan, both of whom survived the shooting.
ICYMI
UVA, in the days following the mass shooting, asked Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares to appoint outside counsel to conduct an independent review of the University’s response to the shooting, the efforts to assess the potential threat the shooter posed, and University safety policies and procedures.
Miyares appointed Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP as special counsel to review the events that preceded the tragedy. The AG also appointed Zachary Terwilliger, a former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, to review federal, state, and local law enforcement issues surrounding the incident.
That review has been in the hands of UVA officials since Oct. 20, 2023, and upon its receipt, the school committed to releasing the details of the review “by early November,” which would have been a couple of weeks later.
We’re obviously well past “early November” in 2023.
Under wraps
“Now that Jones has pled guilty in the case and his sentencing has been delayed until late 2025, Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Hingeley has informed the University that he has withdrawn his concern that releasing the reports prior to sentencing would influence the outcome of the remainder of the criminal proceedings,” Coy wrote in the online statement on Wednesday.
That has been the go-to excuse from UVA – that Hingeley didn’t want the report released publicly because he supposedly had concerns that its contents could impact the criminal proceedings.
ICYMI
UVA, in court, also claimed exemptions on the grounds of attorney-client privilege, legal work product and scholastic records, employing a sort of kitchen-sink defense.
We came to learn those additional details of the kitchen-sink approach to keeping the report under wraps thanks to The Daily Progress, the Charlottesville-based daily newspaper, which filed a suit citing the Virginia Freedom of Information Act last February to try to force the release of the report.
In the course of a hearing in that case, “UVA’s own witnesses and attorneys acknowledged that the report was compiled by lawyers and not law enforcement agencies, and those lawyers were advised that the documents would be released to the public upon completion,” Daily Progress staff writer Hawes Spencer noted in an online report.
Which would seem to undermine, you know, pretty much everything the University had been claiming as shields to the public release of the report, which, again, had been something that was promised initially when UVA got its hands on the report from the AG.
“University leadership is currently reviewing the report to ensure factual accuracy, as well as the report’s recommendations,” Coy wrote in an Oct. 20, 2023, email to AFP. “We will also discuss the recommendations with the Board of Visitors and with those who were most directly affected by this terrible tragedy, including the families of the students who were killed on Nov. 13, 2022.
“Following these steps, the University will share the report publicly, with a goal of doing so by early November,” Coy said.
Fast forward to the spring of 2024, when it emerged that UVA had agreed to pay out a total of $9 million to the victims and the families of the victims in the shooting.
ICYMI
At that time, Elliott Buckner, a lawyer representing the family of D’Sean Perry, called out UVA for keeping the details of the external review under cover.
“The most important thing for these families, the thing that will really bring them closure, is to know what happened to their sons. It is time for UVA and the Commonwealth to release the report,” Buckner said.
What we’re learning today: it took 16 months for UVA to even release the report into what happened to the victims and families of the victims.
That’s cold.
What we might expect to see in the final report
It’s not going to look good on UVA, to say the least, because Jones, from what we know already, had very much been on the school’s radar before the shooting happened.
It emerged in the aftermath of Nov. 13, 2022, that Jones’ roommate had reported before the shooting that Jones had a gun, and it’s important to note that a Nov. 14 search of Jones’ dorm room found a semi-automatic rifle, semi-automatic pistol, nearly 60 rounds of ammunition and other gun magazines and armory tools, so, yes, he had not only a gun, but a small arsenal.
The University of Virginia explicitly prohibits guns on University grounds.
The policy reads in part: “The possession, storage, or use of any weapon by any University student, faculty, employee, contractor, trainee, or volunteer is prohibited on University property. This prohibition also applies regardless of whether a person has a concealed weapon permit.”
According to the UVA policy, “failure to comply with the requirements of this policy may result in denied entry, removal from University Property, and/or disciplinary action up to and including termination and expulsion in accordance with relevant University policies.”
Back to the report from the roommate: University Police, after failing to make direct contact with Jones – a UVA spokesperson said Jones “repeatedly refused to cooperate with University officials” – somehow ended up moving on from diving into that matter further.
So, that ball was dropped, and then it was also discovered in the course of that investigation by UVA officials that Jones had been convicted in 2021 on a concealed-weapons charge, and had not reported the conviction to the University as required.
The school prepared to refer the failure of Jones to report the conviction to a student-led judiciary committee for potential discipline, and after originally saying that this had been done, a school spokesperson later clarified that the matter had in fact not been referred to the committee for further action.
To reiterate, we already know about these two dropped balls.
For UVA to have fought the release of the external review into Nov. 13, 2022, tooth and nail for the past 16 months might tell us that there is more in the way of balls that were dropped still to come.
More from AFP on Nov. 13, 2022
- UVA victim’s mom: ‘Something could have been done to prevent this’
- UVA murderer rapped about shooting people, had small arsenal in his dorm room
- Chris Jones wasn’t bullied by his victims: They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time
- Why did Chris Jones pull the trigger? He was a top student, but troubled young man
- Only one person needed to act: We all failed Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis and D’Sean Perry
- State Police: Gun found at the scene of UVA triple-murder; two others at suspect’s residence
- UVA shooter was able to legally buy guns while serving three suspended sentences
- UVA student describes horror on the bus: ‘I was checking his body, and he had gunshots’
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Chris Graham
