The Washington Post has come under fire for its publication of an article on the alleged gunman at the University of Virginia with a headline that reads like the intro of a promotional piece.
The Post ran a piece Sunday night with the headline, “Suspected U-Va. shooter had rough beginnings, but later bloomed,” about 22-year-old Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., who is suspected of shooting and murdering three people and wounded two more.
The Post claimed Jones’ troubled history included being tormented as a student and coming from a poor Richmond area.
When Jones was young, he and his family lived in a Richmond public housing complex where it was frequently too hazardous to play outside, according to the Richmond-Times Dispatch. Today, Jones is enrolled as an undergraduate in the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Virginia. Jones would occasionally have to trek to the local grocery shop to pick up Ramen noodles or bologna for his three younger brothers while their mother was at work. He lost his father to a divorce when he was five years old, which he describes as “one of the most terrible things that occurred to me in my life.”
Jones, then 18 years old, told a reporter, “When I went to school, people didn’t understand me.” He went on to explain that he had been attacked by other students who had tormented him because of his intelligence, resulting in suspensions and time spent in alternative education.
The Post also claims that when police contacted Jones’s mother, all she said was, “I can tell you now that Chris was a wonderful child,” before hanging up.
After receiving backlash from readers, the Washington Post removed the tweet promoting the news from their main account. However, as of this writing, the tweet is still visible on the Post Local account. The Post’s title was compared to the time when Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the terrible leader of ISIS, was called an “austere religious scholar,” and the comparison was met with laughter.
Jones was apprehended Monday morning after a hunt for him continued through the night in the wake of the shooting.