CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – For the first time in the opening three days of his sentencing hearing, Christopher Darnell Jones Jr. became visibly overcome with emotion on Wednesday as he listened to character witnesses testify about his abusive upbringing and the hope they had for him when he seemed to overcome that by going to college at the University of Virginia.
Jones appeared to break down multiple times as his cousin, Antonio Clarke Jr., and his academic mentor, Dr. Cyndee Reece Blount, appeared as character witnesses for the defense, as Jones’ attorneys seek to lessen a sentence that could keep Jones in jail for the rest of his life for the murder of UVA football players Devin Chander, Lavel Davis Jr. and D’Sean Perry, on Nov. 13, 2022.
Blount, now Powhatan Public Schools director of human resources, testified that, out of the thousands of high school students she has worked with in her three decades in education, Jones would be “the last one” she would think could be commit the crimes he pled guilty to…