Jets' Chris Glaser touched by Virginia shooting
Memorial flowers and notes line walkway at Scott Stadium after three football players were killed in a shooting on the grounds of the University of Virginia Tuesday Nov. 15, 2022, in Charlottesville. Va. Credit: AP/Steve Helber
Chris Glaser remains in the campus loop. He receives the university’s alerts. That’s how barely removed he is from the situation.
“I still get the emails,” he said.
The one that popped up in his inbox Sunday night told him there was a shooting at the University of Virginia, where he had spent most of the past four years, and that he should shelter in place until the police determined it was clear to come out.
Of course, Glaser was safe in New Jersey at the time. He’s a rookie offensive lineman on the Jets’ practice squad and was getting ready to report to work the next morning fresh off the bye week. So he paid little attention to those urgent messages.
Then on Monday he woke up to more messages and emails, these from people he knew, and he learned it wasn’t just his former school that had become the latest to involuntarily host such senseless devastation.
It was his team.
His family.
“I knew all of them,” Glaser told Newsday on Wednesday. “Including,” he added, his voice dropping almost to a whisper, “the shooter.”
Authorities are still trying to piece together everything that happened on that bus Sunday night as it returned to the college from a field trip to Washington, D.C. Christopher Jones Jr. has been arrested for the shooting of five people, two of whom survived. Jones was a member of the football team with Glaser in 2018, though he never played for Virginia.
On Wednesday, he wrote the jersey numbers of the three deceased victims — 41, 1 and 15 — on the tape on his right wrist to commemorate them. Hardly anyone noticed them. But that wasn’t the point. The important part was Glaser knew they were there.
He wasn’t the only Jet mourning. Third-year cornerback Bryce Hall was also hit hard by the news at his alma mater. He said he knew Mike Hillis, a player who survived the shooting, and D’Sean Perry, who did not.
“For people of faith you always wonder what’s the purpose in all of this? Why?” Hall said. “A lot of times we don’t have answers for it and a lot of times we’re left trying to cope the best way we can. It’s never easy. These were great young men with a bright future. You ask how could things like this unfold? It leaves you feeling that you never know what’s going to happen a day from now, a week from now, a year from now.”
The headlines refer to these young men as “football players.” To Glaser they were friends. One by one he briefly eulogized each of them with a touching memory as he sat at his locker after practice.
Lavel Davis Jr. was a tall receiver, Glaser said. He scored a touchdown as a freshman and celebrated by cradling the football and “rocking the baby.” That earned him his nickname from Glaser.
“I used to call him ‘Daycare,’ ” Glaser said. “Whenever he made a great play I’d yell ‘Daycare!’ ”
Perry was an artist. “Rapping, drawing, architecture,” Glaser said, “there was nothing that kid couldn’t do.”
Devin Chandler was assigned to Glaser as a recruit when he visited Virginia. They quickly realized they had a similar background; both were born in Hawaii to military families. “We bonded over that,” Glaser said.
They all remained close after Glaser left Charlottesville for the NFL, signing first with Kansas City after the draft and then with the Jets shortly after the start of training camp.
“When I went back after my Pro Day I hung out with the guys,” he said. “Three great men. Three great boys who were taken from us. It’s tough.”
Tough for Glaser to focus on his job, on helping get the Jets ready for the Patriots on Sunday, on the drumbeat toward the biggest Jets game in years or maybe even decades.
“I’m here but I want to be helpful as much as I can be back there,” he said. “I’ve just been calling [other former teammates] and letting them know if they need anything I’m here. I just try my best to be there and be strong for them. This is definitely a tough time for them.”
Hall is a bit further removed from the situation but no less affected as he prepares for the Patriots.
“You have to compartmentalize it,” Hall said. “You have to protect your heart, especially in times like this, when it can be easy to allow grief to flip over into your thoughts. It’s not wrong to grieve but it’s important not to let it linger for too long, I believe, because then it begins to leak out in unhealthy ways.”
Virginia canceled this weekend’s home football game to deal with the shock and grief. The NFL marches on.
Hall said he and other former Virginia players currently in the NFL have spoken about raising funds for the families of the victims. He hasn’t yet decided how he will honor them on Sunday — perhaps with their numbers on his cleats or a wristband or some other gesture — but he is certain he will. Glaser said he will try to live out not just his NFL dream but the ones that were taken from his pals. It’s all he can do, he said.
“I feel like you have to keep going on for them,” he said. “They’d still want us to go on. We just have to carry their legacy and their names with us forever.”
Soon, sadly, another email will be sent out telling students at the University of Somewhere — and former students not yet detached from the electronic grip of their campus — to hunker down, find a safe place, wait for news. Details will trickle out. Names of victims will be learned. They’ll be mourned and memorialized.
News of their demise likely won’t make it into the sports section, nevermind an NFL locker room.
They probably won’t have jersey numbers by which to be remembered.
This time they just happened to.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
