Driver accused of murder in Charlottesville violence faces court hearing
US - A man said to have harbored Nazi sympathies as a teenager before a failed bid to join the US Army was due in court yesterday to face charges he plowed his car into protesters opposing a white nationalist rally in Virginia, killing a woman and injuring 19.
The bail hearing for James Alex Fields, 20, arrested on suspicion of murder, malicious wounding and hitand-run charges, was set to unfold in Charlottesville as the US Justice Department pressed its own federal hate-crime investigation of the incident. Authorities said Heather Heyer, 32, was killed when Fields’ car slammed into a crowd of anti-racism activists confronting neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan (KKK) sympathizers, capping a day of bloody street brawls between the two sides in the Virginia college town on Saturday. More than 30 people were injured in separate incidents, and two state police officers died in the crash of their helicopter after assisting in efforts to quell the unrest. The fatal disturbances began with white nationalists converging to protest against plans to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, the commander of rebel forces during the US Civil War.
President
Donald
Trump’s reaction to the clashes - the first major domestic crisis he has faced since taking office - ignited a wider political firestorm at the weekend. Democrats and Republicans alike criticized Trump for waiting too long to address the violence, and for failing when he did speak out to explicitly condemn white-supremacist marchers widely seen as sparking the melee.
(Reuters.com)