CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Sentencing for convicted University of Virginia shooter Christopher Darnell Jones Jr. commenced Monday morning, with one of Jones’ victims, former UVA football player Mike Hollins, and Hollins’s mother taking the stand.

Brenda Hollins told Albemarle County Circuit Court judge Cheryl Higgins that the suffering Jones caused the families of the victims will never fade.

“This is a life sentence for all of us,” she said.

Michael Hollins, who was shot through the back by Jones in the Nov. 13, 2022 incident that claimed the lives of fellow football players Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and D’Sean Perry, the emotional strain and survivor’s guilt has outlasted the physical pain.

“I realized I was the one who was spared,” Michael Hollins said. “It’s three years later and I can still feel it.”

Jones pled guilty in November 2024 to three counts of first-degree murder, two counts of aggravated malicious wounding and five counts of use of a firearm in the commission of a felony.

Chandler, Davis Jr. and Perry were killed, Michael Hollins and a fifth student, Marlee Morgan, were injured when Jones shot them on, and outside, a bus they had all taken to Washington D.C. for a class field trip.

Jones faces anywhere from 23 years to 54 years and five months in jail. He sat at a table with three defense attorneys, wearing a gray suit. He was stoic for most of the morning’s testimony, becoming teary when a student talked about how she was impacted by being on the bus that day.

His sentencing hearing is scheduled to last five days, concluding on Friday. The proceeding opened Monday with opening arguments from the prosecution and the defense. The defense argued that there are mitigating circumstances that drove Jones into mental illness and violence, including an abusive childhood.

A member of his defense team told the court that Jones “succumbed” to the pain and “scars of childhood,” when he committed his crimes, saying being physically abused as a child and witnessing domestic abuse in his home, led to Jones becoming “delusional” and “paranoid.”

“Chris will regret that day for the rest of his life,” his attorney said.

The defense also argued that the football players had been giving Jones a hard time during the trip, or at least, that he perceived that had occurred.

But the Commonwealth began calling witnesses, leading off with two other students who were on the bus that day. Both of them, Xuled Stiff and Morgan Deane, testified they never saw anyone giving Jones a hard time. Hollins told the court the same thing.

Stiff, who spent six years in the Air Force before enrolling at UVA, testified she heard “a loud pop,” then turned and saw Davis fighting with someone at the back of the bus. Then she saw Davis fall to his knees, his orange sweatshirt stained red, before falling forward onto his chest.

Stiff called 9-1-1 after Jones got off the bus, and prosecutors played a recording of that call for the court Monday.

Stiff went on to to tell Higgins that she lives with the fear, “terrified and shaken and overwhelmed with grief.”

Next, the prosecution called student Morgan Dean, who testified that the class’s professor, Theresa Davis – belovingly referred to as “Lady T” by the student witnesses – was happy that Jones, who was not in the class, had showed up for the field trip.

“She was thrilled that he could make it,” Dean said.

Deane said she was seated in the middle of the bus on the drive back to Charlottesville. She heard what sounded like “a balloon popping,” and heard someone yell, “‘Get down.’”

Deane testified she heard Jones – who was seated a few feet to her left in the courtroom yell, “Y’all been fucking with me all day,” after the initial shot. She went on to say, “I saw the defendant shoot Lavel in the back of the head.”

She said Jones walked past her to exit the bus, then she heard more gunshots and Hollins yelling in pain.

Like Stiff, Deane said she lives with a constant anxiety, often triggered just by seeing buses.

“Every bus is that bus,” Deane said.

Brenda Hollins took the stand next. She said she had been in Charlottesville the day before the shooting to attend the football game against Pittsburgh. She flew home to Louisiana and, Sunday night, got a call from a UVA hospital nurse who told her Michael had been shot.

“That plays over and over in my mind,” Brenda Hollins said. “Getting that call and not being there.”

Higgins had to remind Hollins not to comment on the defendant, but Hollins made her opinion clear when she told the court of the pain she and the families of the three murdered players live with.

Michael Hollins took the stand next, testifying for nearly 30 minutes about his recollection of the field trip, the shooting and his recovery.

While both Dean and Stiff sat with their chairs pivoted slightly toward the team of Commonwealth Attorneys, Michael Hollins looked over at Jones at least twice during his testimony.

Hollins said he only took note of Jones once during the day, when Jones walked to the back of the bus, where Hollins and Perry were seated, to use the bathroom. Hollins said he saw Jones bump his head on the luggage racks over bus seats.

“That was the last time I saw him,” Hollins said. “Until he shot me.”

Hollins denied the defense’s assertion that the football players were giving Jones a hard time.

“There wasn’t any drama on the bus,” Hollins said.

He described the bus ride home as “joyful.”

“Until it wasn’t,” Hollins said.

Hollins testified that he ran off the bus, then turned back because he had left his “best friend,” Perry, behind.

That’s when he said Jones got off the bus and pointed a gun at him. Hollins said he dropped his “book pack” and turned to run, when Jones shot him “in cold blood.”

“He shot me in the back,” Hollins told the court.

Hollins concluded his testimony by telling Higgins, of Jones, “He doesn’t fall outside of God’s grasp and his reach.”

The court went into recess following Hollins’s testimony. The Commonwealth was expected to call its lead detective on the case in the afternoon session. The hearing is scheduled to conclude Friday.