Victim’s mother calls for action

THE mother of the young woman mowed down while protesting at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville urged mourners at a memorial service yesterday to “make my child’s death worthwhile” by confronting injustice the way she did.

“They tried to kill my child to shut her up. Well, guess what? You just magnified her,” said Susan Bro, receiving a standing ovation from the hundreds who packed a downtown theatre to remember 32year-old Heather Heyer.

Ms Heyer’s death last weekend – and President Donald Trump’s insistence that “both sides” bear responsibility for the violence – continued to reverberate across the country.

Mr Trump faced fleeing corporate chieftains so he abruptly abolished two of his White House business councils. He announced the action via tweet, although only after one of the panels had already agreed to disband earlier in the day.

Denise Morrison, chief executive of Campbell Soup, declared she was leaving Mr Trump’s manufacturing council, saying, “the president should have been – and still needs to be – unambiguous” in denouncing white supremacists.

Ms Heyer was eulogised as a woman with a powerful sense of fairness. The mourners applauded as her mother urged them to channel their anger not into violence but into “righteous action”.

State troopers were stationed on the surrounding streets, but the white nationalists who had vowed to show up were nowhere to be seen.

Ms Heyer, a white legal assistant from Charlottesville, was killed and 19 others were injured when a car ploughed into counterprotesters who had taken to the streets to decry the country’s biggest gathering of white nationalists in at least a decade.

The hundreds of white nationalists had descended on Charlottesville after the city decided to remove a monument to Confederate General Robert E Lee.

The driver of the car, James Alex Fields Jr, a 20-year-old Ohio man, was arrested and charged with murder.

Meantime, a tweet by former US president Barack Obama about the violence in Charlottesville has become the most liked message in the history of Twitter.

The tweet by the country’s first black president quoted Nelson Mandela. “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion,” Mr Obama tweeted.

THEY TRIED TO KILL MY CHILD TO SHUT HER UP. WELL, GUESS WHAT? YOU JUST MAGNIFIED HER SUSAN BRO