Saying he can’t believe it was him is different from saying it wasn’t and seems like would be fairly normal response, but his father wasn’t around for awhile. He also moved away from his mom and lived with grandmother at 16.

Besides being under threat assessment at university and concealed gun charge in 2021 he seems to have been showing stability issues before college and before move to his grandmother’s house in 2016. The 2018 article below can show culture’s attitude towards those that focus on education which is still being ignored, but it can also show beginning of his issues with violence and paranoia of others being against him without his father being around or getting much support from his mother.

quote:
“When I come into the classrooms, everything flowed,” Jones said. “You knew what you were walking into every day.”

But much of the time, he said, the other kids didn’t expect a kid from the projects to raise his hand in class.

“I would get upset because my intelligence was being insulted. Kids would pick on me — ‘Why did you do that? Why did you answer that question?’ ” Jones said. “And in that world, disrespect means you should fight.”

The fights were also an escape. With the punches went the stress and sadness of not seeing his father...

“People would say, ‘You’re too smart to be doing something like that,’ ” he said of fighting. “But it’s because of where I was at. Sometimes I’m not in a good head space. Fighting at first was my only way of relieving stress.”

He eventually started welcoming the suspensions and the punishment of alternative school. Alternative school meant more solitude, where he could maintain straight A’s without the bullying. His mother didn’t understand that, he said, and saw him as a troublemaker.

https://richmond.com/news/local/central-virginia/petersburg-high-graduate-navigated-a-fractured-path-to-graduation/article_17a60432-0b1b-5a54-acfd-b4158d434819.html

Paranoia during shooting

quote:
"Chris got up and pushed [victim] Lavel [Davis]. And then after he pushed him, he was like, ‘You guys are always messing with me.’ He said something weird like that. But it was very bizarre because they didn't talk to him the whole trip,"

quote:
“I know he had a downfall,” she said about her grandson’s state of mind. “I believe he had some problems there,” she said, referring to UVA.
Jones’ father Christopher Darnell Jones Sr. told NBC 12 Monday his son told him “some people was picking on him” and “he didn’t know how to handle it.”

Almost looks like a different person.