More than a year before he was charged with shooting and killing three fellow University of Virginia students, Christopher Darnell Jones Jr. appeared in a music video holding a gun and rapping about murder and his own mental troubles.
The video, posted on YouTube on Aug. 15, 2021, features Mr. Jones, another rapper and others dancing and aiming guns at the camera, and it adds to the questions surrounding the university’s investigation of Mr. Jones in the months before the shooting. He had left a trail of warning signs, including a concealed weapon violation and a felony charge that was pleaded down to a misdemeanor.
While the university started investigating Mr. Jones in September, after another student had reported that he had mentioned having a gun, officials did not interview him because he had refused to cooperate, they said. Nor did anyone from the university search his room, which would have revealed a cache of weapons and ammunition.
Mr. Jones, 23, describes in the video several ways that he would kill people, including shooting people at a party and killing another person “in his sleep.” Mr. Jones mentions having mental problems and says he frequently carries a weapon, themes that echo those in songs posted on the music streaming service SoundCloud under his rap moniker as far back as 2018.
It is not clear whether the guns were real or props, or whether Mr. Jones wrote the lyrics he rapped over two verses in the video. Nor is it clear whether the lyrics were specific threats or blustery nods to the explicit lyrics and violent imagery commonly found in popular music. But the presence of the guns in the video raises questions about whether the university knew, or should have known, about the online activity of Mr. Jones as it investigated him.
Another rapper on the song, who said on Facebook that he had been in touch with Mr. Jones in custody, declined to comment immediately when contacted by The New York Times and did not respond to follow-up calls. The videographer who filmed the music video also did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Asked whether the University of Virginia was aware of the music video, Brian Coy, a spokesman, said the university “won’t be commenting on these matters” while the Virginia State Police conducts a criminal investigation into the shooting and the state attorney general’s office conducts an external review, which the university requested.
Mr. Jones had a semiautomatic rifle, a pistol, ammunition and a device designed to increase a weapon’s rate of fire in his dorm room on campus, according to a police search warrant inventory obtained by The Daily Progress, a local newspaper. A special agent with the Virginia State Police executed the search warrant on Nov. 14, less than 12 hours after the shooting, according to The Daily Progress.
After white nationalists rioted in Charlottesville in 2017, the University of Virginia entered into a contract with a company, Social Sentinel, that tracks social media in an effort to detect threatening posts and then supplies the information to the campus police, according to The Daily Progress.
JP Guilbault, the chief executive of Social Sentinel’s parent company, Navigate360, said the company had not had a contract with the University of Virginia in several years. Mr. Guilbault said the software worked by looking for certain keywords, along with locations in public social media postings and on a school’s network, but only if the threat was specific.
“If he said, ‘I’m going to kill students at the University of Virginia,’ that would have been picked up,” Mr. Guilbault said. As for the university, Mr. Guilbaut said, “I would assume they still use, and have applicable processes to evaluate, social channels.”
On Sept. 1, the university police received a presentation from a representative of Meta, titled, “Working With Meta to Enhance Your Investigations.” A spokeswoman for Meta said the presentation had focused on the legal parameters the company worked within when processing law enforcement requests, such as requirements for obtaining subpoenas.
Mr. Coy has said that on Oct. 26, after Mr. Jones “repeatedly refused to cooperate” with the university’s investigation, a representative for student affairs sent Mr. Jones an email warning that his failure to report the concealed weapon conviction would be referred to the University Judiciary Committee, the student-run body that handles discipline on campus. But, for reasons that remain unclear, that referral was never made.
Mr. Jones would not have been allowed to have firearms on campus, and ammunition is explicitly prohibited in student housing, according to policies listed on the university’s website. But several lawyers said that these policies did not give authorities explicit permission to search student rooms for prohibited items, and that a search warrant would most likely be needed.
“A student’s dorm room is like anyone else’s home, and they retain the same privacy rights as a homeowner,” said Steven D. Benjamin, a prominent defense lawyer in Virginia. “No entry can be made absent emergency, consent or the execution of a search warrant.”
And he said getting a warrant would have been difficult in this case. “If you took all of those items together,” Mr. Benjamin said, referring to the remark about a gun from another student, the discovery of Mr. Jones’s past misdemeanor conviction and the video, “I don’t see any judge issuing a search warrant.”
Virginia’s attorney general is bringing on a special counsel to conduct a review of the events that led to the shooting. Officials at the university have asked that the review focus in part on “efforts the university undertook in the period before the tragedy to assess the potential threat Mr. Jones posed to our community.”
Many of Mr. Jones’s friends spoke about him on Facebook in the days after the shooting, seemingly in defense of his character. Some pointed to a video interview that Mr. Jones gave while attending Petersburg High School, where he was recognized as a student who was excelling. In the video, Mr. Jones said, “I’m here because I love school. I love the environment of school.” He added: “Don’t quit. When things get tough, when things get hard in the classroom, don’t ever give up. Grind. Go hard.” In another video, he sang a popular gospel song in an auditorium after receiving some awards.
“He was just somebody that you would want around. Like, he was always just walking around dancing and singing. He was just a joyful person in high school,” said Devel Browder, who went to high school with Mr. Jones. She added, “Because from who we know, Chris, it’s not like him to do this.”
Mr. Jones has been charged with three counts of second-degree murder, two counts of malicious wounding and five counts of using a handgun in the commission of a felony. He has not entered a plea. The lawyer representing Mr. Jones declined to comment.
D’Sean Perry, Lavel Davis Jr. and Devin Chandler, all members of the university’s football team, were killed in the shooting on a bus that had just returned from a class field trip to see a play in Washington. A fourth football player, Michael Hollins, was shot in the back and hospitalized; according to his father, he is expected to make a full recovery. Another student, Marlee Morgan, was also injured in the attack. Mr. Jones was also on the trip.
Last week, Virginia canceled its football team’s last game, ending its season.
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