Alleged Charlottesville killer James Fields ‘sympathised with Nazism and idolised Hitler’, former teacher recalls
In blog posts after the violence, the Daily Stormer, a leading white nationalist website that promoted the Charlottesville event, pledged to hold more events soon
The man accused of ploughing a car into a crowd protesting a white supremacist rally in Virginia, killing a woman, had been photographed hours earlier carrying the emblem of one of the hate groups that participated in the event.
Vanguard America on Sunday denied any association with the suspect, even as a separate hate group involved in Saturday’s rally pledged on social media to organise future events that would be “bigger than Charlottesville.”
Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced late Saturday that federal authorities would pursue a civil rights investigation into the circumstances surrounding the crash. The violence and deaths in Charlottesville “strike at the heart of American law and justice,” Sessions wrote. “When such actions arise from racial bigotry and hatred, they betray our core values and cannot be tolerated.”
Police charged James Alex Fields Jnr with second-degree murder and other counts after the silver Dodge Challenger they say he was driving barrelled through a crowd of counter-protesters, killing a Heather Heyer, 32, and wounding at least 19 others. Hours later, two state troopers were killed when the helicopter they were flying in as part of a large-scale police effort at the rally crashed into a wooded area outside the city.
In a photo taken by the New York Daily News, the 20-year-old Fields was shown standing with a half-dozen other men, all wearing the Vanguard America uniform of khakis and white polo shirts. The men held white shields with Vanguard America’s black-and-white logo of two crossed axes. The Confederate statue of Robert E. Lee was in the background.
The Daily News said the photo was taken about 10.30am Saturday just hours before authorities say Fields crashed his car into the crowd at 1.42pm. The Anti-Defamation League says Vanguard America believes the US is an exclusively white nation, and uses propaganda to recruit young white men online and on college campuses.
In high school, Fields was an “average” student, but with a keen interest in military history, Hitler, and Nazi Germany, said Derek Weimer, who said he was Fields’ social studies teacher at Randall K. Cooper high school in Union, Kentucky, in Fields’ junior and senior years.
“Once you talked to James for a while, you would start to see that sympathy towards Nazism, that idolisation of Hitler, that belief in white supremacy,” Weimer said. “It would start to creep out.”
Trump’s National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said the attack “meets the definition of terrorism”.
In a Twitter post, the group said it had handed out the shields “to anyone in attendance who wanted them,” and denied Fields was a member. “All our members are safe an (sic) accounted for, with no arrests or charges.”
In blog posts after the violence, the Daily Stormer, a leading white nationalist website that promoted the Charlottesville event, pledged to hold more events “soon.”
“We are going to start doing this nonstop,” the post said. “We are going to go bigger than Charlottesville. We are going to go huge.”
Saturday’s chaos erupted as neo-Nazis, skinheads, Ku Klux Klan members and other white supremacist groups arrived for the rally. Counter-protesters were also on hand, and the two sides clashed, with people throwing punches, hurling water bottles and unleashing chemical sprays. Some came prepared for a fight, with body armor and helmets. Videos that ricocheted around the world on social media showed people beating each other with sticks and shields.
Officials have not provided a crowd estimate but it appeared to number well over 1,000.
Later, as counter-protesters were marching through a part of downtown a few blocks from the statue, the Dodge Challenger tore through the crowd.
The impact hurled people into the air and blew off their shoes. Heather Heyer, 32, was killed as she crossed the street.
“It was a wave of people flying at me,” said Sam Becker, 24, speaking in the emergency room where he was being treated for leg and hand injuries.
Those left standing scattered, screaming and running for safety. Video caught the car reversing, hitting more people, its windshield splintered from the collision and its bumper dragging on the pavement. Medics carried the injured, bloodied and crying, away as a police tank rolled down the street.
McAuliffe and Charlottesville Mayor Michael Signer, both Democrats, lumped the blame squarely on the rancor that has seeped into American politics and the white supremacists who came from out of town into the city, nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and home to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s plantation.
Fields’ mother, Samantha Bloom, said late Saturday that she knew her son, who had recently moved to Ohio from his hometown in Kentucky, was attending a rally in Virginia but didn’t know it was a white supremacist rally.
“I thought it had something to do with Trump. Trump’s not a white supremacist,” Bloom said.
Trump criticized the violence in a tweet Saturday, followed by a press conference and a call for “a swift restoration of law and order.”
“We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides,” he said.
The “on many sides” ending of his statement drew the ire of his critics, who said he failed to specifically denounce white supremacy and equated those who came to protest racism with the white supremacists.