UVA Shooting Survivor Tells His Story: ‘I Felt So Helpless’

University of Virginia running back Mike Hollins was there and says he “felt so helpless” when Christopher Darnell Jones allegedly opened fire with a handgun and killed three of his fellow football players.

Breitbart News reported Jones allegedly opened fire with a handgun aboard a bus last month just as it returned to the school from a university trip. Three UVA football players–Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis, and D’Sean Perry–were killed in the attack.

Mike Hollins was about to  get off the bus when the shots began being fired.

USA Today noted Hollins told Good Morning America, “Once I got up, and the bus was stopping, is when the gunshots started ringing out. In that moment, I knew we had to get off that bus because it could get a lot worse. Me and another teammate were the only two to get off the bus. I turned back and I look over my shoulder, and I realize we’re the only two running.”

He indicated he turned back out of “instinct” to help his teammates and he was just a few steps back on the bus when he locked eyes with the attacker.

Hollins said there was “a cold look” in the attacker’s eyes, adding, “I don’t know, it was just like a numb look. … It was so close and I felt so hopeless and powerless in that moment.”

He took off running and felt a bullet hit him in the back.

Hollins said, “But I just knew I wasn’t going down without a fight. I found a pre-med student, and that was God again. She was there to help me, kept me calm, kept my breathing under control, was checking my pulse until the ambulance came.”

He noted, “I think I got hit in the small intestine, kidney, and they were trying to see if it damaged my bladder. By the grace of God, it missed my spine by like, two centimeters or something like that.”

Breitbart News observed Jones, the alleged shooter, faced disciplinary action from UVA prior to the shooting.

UVA police chief Timothy Longo used part of a November 14, 2022, press conference to explain that Jones had come to the attention of the school’s threat assessment team in September.

Longo noted, “Our office of student affairs reported to multidisciplinary threat assessment that they received information that Mr. Jones had made a comment about possessing a gun to a person who was unaffiliated with the university.”

Longo pointed out Jones also came to the threat assessment team’s attention via alleged “involvement in a hazing investigation of some sort” and that Jones  had “a criminal incident involving a concealed weapon violation outside the city of Charlottesville in February of 2021.”

CNN noted, “UVA officials sought more information about both the claim that Jones had a gun and his misdemeanor conviction,” but Jones “repeatedly refused to cooperate.”

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. AWR Hawkins holds a PhD in Military History with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.