A university shooter reportedly asked questions about a video game before killing three football players.
Christopher Darnell Jones Jr, 22 is accused of fatally shooting Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis and D’Sean Perry after they had returned to the Charlottesville campus, in Virginia, from a field trip.
Two other students were wounded in the campus shooting late on Sunday night, which happened near a parking garage as the charter bus full of students returned from seeing a play in Washington, D.C.
The shooting touched off an intense manhunt, with authorities ordering students to shelter in place and conducting a building-by-building and grounds search of the campus.
Students stayed in place for more than 12 hours until the order was lifted late Monday morning.
Former student Jones Jr was arrested on Monday morning in Henrico, and faces three charges of second-degree murder.
Gordon McKernan, a family friend of Mike Hollins, one of the injured victims, said the suspect had asked about a video game prior to the shooting.
McKernan said: "He was asking one of the football players about a video game."
Another witness has now claimed the alleged suspect “got up and pushed” one of the victims, Lavel Davis Jr.
Ryan Lynch, 19, told the New York Post: "After he pushed him, he was like, ‘You guys are always messing with me'.
"He said something like that, but it was really bizarre because they didn’t talk to him the whole trip."
"We thought he was going to shoot everyone in the bus at that point … I thought we all were going to die."
Mr Jones’ father, Christopher Darnell Jones Sr, told NBC12 his son had complained about school last month and said he was being picked on.
He said: "He had some problems the last time I talked to him. He said some people was picking on him or whatever, he didn’t know how to handle it, and I just told him don’t pay it any mind and just go to school.
“He was really paranoid when I talk to him about something, but he wouldn’t tell me everything. He was a very sensitive young man.”
University of Virginia President Jim Ryan wrote to students informing them the incident happened at about 10.30pm on Sunday, after the college's emergency management issued an alert notifying the campus community of an "active attacker firearm".
He asked students to shelter in place following a report of shots fired on Culbreth Road on the northern outskirts of campus.
