VIOLENCE IN VIRGINIA

Extremists’ rally turns fatal

As a girl, Heather Heyer stood up for people being picked on while riding the schools bus.

On Saturday, she was killed standing up for her country.

Heyer, 32, was among those gathered in Charlottesville to oppose the neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members and other white nationalists making a show of force in Charlottesville.

“People will remember her name and remember what she died for,” said a friend, Felicia Correa.

Charlottesville city officials said in a statement Sunday that “Heyer was struck down by a vehicle while exercising her peaceful first-amendment right to free speech. This senseless act of violence rips a hole in our collective hearts.”

Correa said she recently was swamped with medical bills after complications related to her multiple sclerosis, so she went to a Charlottesville law firm. When Heyer, who was working as a paralegal there, walked out to meet her she was ecstatic to see the friend she had known growing up in Greene County, Va.

Heyer jumped in and guided Correa, who was uninsured and is a mother of six, through the daunting financial process. When Correa heard Heyer had been killed Saturday, she said she wanted to help her family, just like their daughter helped her a few months ago.

Heyer was a “young white woman who died standing up not just for people of colour in general but, also the people of colour that I love, that I worry about,” said Correa, who is biracial.

“She died for a reason. I don’t see any difference in her or a soldier who died in war. She, in a sense, died for her country. She was there standing up for what was right,” Correa said. “I just want to make sure that it wasn’t in vain.”