UVA Shooting Victim Called Mom Moments Before Death: Report

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA — A University of Virginia football player who died when a gunman opened fire on a charter bus called his mother moments before his death, according to a report by NBC News.

D’Sean Perry, a linebacker for the Cavaliers and a south Florida native, was one of three football players fatally shot by a UVA student on Nov. 13. The student, Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., 22, was charged with three counts of second-degree murder and also faces two charges of malicious wounding for injuring two others.

Junior receiver Lavel Davis Jr., 20, of South Carolina and junior receiver Devin Chandler of North Carolina were also killed in the shooting.

Moments before the gunman opened fire in what police called a "targeted shooting," Perry called his mother, Happy Perry, and told her "they were on the way back, almost to campus, and his phone was going dead," she told NBC.

"Then we started getting tweets ... from social media about that there was an active shooter at the school," his mother told NBC.

Hours later, Perry's family learned he was among those who were fatally shot.

"We're lost, but we’re not empty," Sean Perry told NBC. "I know my son is right here as we speak."

Jones made his first appearance in Albemarle County General District Court on Nov. 16, where prosecutors told the court that Jones appeared to be aiming at specific people on the chartered bus and was not randomly shooting. The bus was returning to Charlottesville after a day trip to Washington, D.C.

Jones is being held at the Charlottesville-Albemarle County Regional Jail without bond.

After the chartered bus pulled to a stop at the Culbreth Garage on UVA's campus and as the students were getting up to exit the bus, Jones pulled out a gun and began firing, the Virginia State Police said in a news release.

As Jones got off the bus, he fired additional shots and then fled the scene on foot. Jones left the Charlottesville area in his black Dodge Durango. During their investigation Sunday night, police found a handgun "in relative proximity to the shooting scene," the state police said.

The next day, Henrico County police arrested Jones without incident.

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