3 slain UVA football players honored with posthumous degrees

(ABC News) – Three University of Virginia football players killed in a mass shooting on the Charlottesville campus have been honored with posthumous degrees from the university.

Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr., and D’Sean Perry were fatally shot on the night of Nov. 13 while on a bus that had just returned from a class trip to see a play in Washington, D.C. Two other students were injured in the incident. The suspected gunman, also a student, was arrested.

Chandler was a second-year student majoring in American studies. American studies professor Jack Hamilton tweeted that he helped Chandler declare his major, “which he was really excited about.”

“He was an unbelievably nice person, always a huge smile, really gregarious and funny,” Hamilton tweeted. “It is so sad and enraging that he is gone.”

Davis, a third-year student, majored in African American and African studies, according to UVA.

In a university video last year, Davis said he loved movies, reading Shakespeare and the Bible.

Davis called UVA the “perfect place for anyone who wants to work hard and be great.”

UVA president Jim Ryan and athletics director Carla Williams were among the university officials who attended the funerals in each of the player’s hometowns.

Williams said, after talking with Davis’ family at his funeral, “it became obvious” “why earning his degree from the University of Virginia was so important to” him. “He worked extremely hard for it,” Williams said in a statement Monday.

Perry, a fourth-year student, double majored in studio art and African American and African studies, according to the university.

Perry was “very, very, very artistic” and loved music, head coach Tony Elliott said at a news conference last month. He had a “sense of humor that was one of a kind,” Elliott said.

The diplomas have been presented to the slain students’ families.