Alleged Charlottesville attacker previously accused of beating wheelchair-bound mom
The driver who allegedly plowed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters in Charlottesville — killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer — had been previously accused of beating his mother and threatening her with a knife, according to authorities.
A former high school teacher described James Alex Fields Jr., 20, of Ohio, as an admirer of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. His mother, Samantha Bloom, who is disabled and uses a wheelchair, repeatedly called police on her son in 2010 and 2011 and told them he was on medication to control his temper.
Fields was arrested and put in juvenile detention after Bloom reported in 2011 that he stood behind her wielding a 12-inch knife. He also allegedly smacked her in the head and locked her in the bathroom in 2010 after she told him to stop playing video games.
He was denied bail yesterday after being charged with second-degree murder and other charges and another hearing is set for Aug. 25. The public defender’s office said it couldn’t represent him because a relative of someone in the office was injured in Saturday’s protest.
In another unsettling incident, one of Fields’ former classmates who accompanied him on a class trip to Europe claimed Fields couldn’t stand the French and was only on the trip to visit “the Fatherland” — Germany.
Keegan McGrath described Fields as “a normal dude,” but who sometimes uttered “dark” jokes, including at least one about the Holocaust and that the two got into a heated debate one night on the trip over his views.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Heyer’s death “does meet the definition of domestic terrorism in our statute.”
“You can be sure we will charge and advance the investigation towards the most serious charges that can be brought, because this is an unequivocally unacceptable and evil attack that cannot be accepted in America,” Sessions said.