WHITE NATIONALISTS, COUNTERPROTESTERS CLASH IN VIRGINIA; CAR RAMS CROWD
Ohio driver faces charges after car plowed into crowd.
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA. — Chaos and violence turned to tragedy Saturday as hundreds of white nationalists, neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members planning to — stage what they described as their largest rally in decades to “take America back” — clashed with counterprotesters in the streets and a car plowed into crowds, leaving one person dead and 19 others injured.
Hours later, two state police officers died when their police helicopter crashed on the outskirts of town. Police said the victims, Lt. H. Jay Cullen and Trooper-Pilot Burke M.M. Bates, had been helping them monitor the rally.
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who had declared a state of emergency in the morning, said at an evening news conference that he had a message for “all the white supremacists and the Nazis who came into Charlottesville today: Go home. You are not wanted in this great commonwealth.”
Maurice Jones, Charlottesville’s African-American city manager, looked stricken as he spoke. “Hate came to our town today, in a way that we had feared but we had never really let ourselves imagine would.”
Video recorded at the scene of the car crash shows a silver Dodge Challenger with Ohio plates accelerating into a crowd on a pedestrian mall, sending bodies flying — and then reversing at high speed, hitting yet more people. Witnesses said the street was filled with people opposed to the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who had come to town bearing Confederate flags and anti-Semitic epithets.
A 32-year-old woman was killed, according to police, who said they were investigating the crash as a criminal homicide. The driver was taken into custody and charges were pending, said Al Thomas, the Charlottesville police chief.
Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail Superintendent Col. Martin Kumer said Saturday that James Alex Fields, 20, of Maumee, Ohio, was arrested on suspicion of second-degree murder, malicious wounding, failure to stop for an accident involving a death, and a hit and run.
Angela Taylor, a spokeswoman for the University of Virginia Medical Center, said 19 others had been brought to the hospital. Five were in critical condition as of Saturday evening. Another 14 people were hurt in street brawls, city officials confirmed.
Earlier, police had evacuated a downtown park as rallygoers and counterprotesters traded blows and hurled bottles and chemical irritants at one another, putting an end to the noon rally before it officially began.
Despite the decision to quash the rally, clashes continued on side streets and throughout the downtown.
Elected leaders in Virginia and elsewhere urged peace, blasting the white supremacist views on display in Charlottesville. U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan called their display “repugnant.”
President Donald Trump, known for his rapid-fire tweets, remained silent throughout the morning. It was after 1 p.m. when he weighed in, writing on Twitter: “We ALL must be united & condemn all that hate stands for. There is no place for this kind of violence in America. Lets come together as one!”
In brief remarks at a late-afternoon news conference to discuss veterans’ health care, Trump said that he was following the events in Charlottesville closely. “The hate and the division must stop and must stop right now,” Trump said, without specifically mentioning the white supremacists or their views. “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides. On many sides.”
Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, a Trump supporter who was in Charlottesville on Saturday, quickly replied via Twitter. “I would recommend you take a good look in the mirror & remember it was White Americans who put you in the presidency, not radical leftists,” he wrote.
Dozens of the so-called “alt right” demonstrators in Charlottesville were wearing red Make America Great Again hats.
Chan Williams, 22, was among the counterprotesters at the pedestrian mall, chanting “Black Lives Matter” and “Whose streets? Our streets!” The marchers blocked traffic, but Williams said drivers weren’t annoyed. Instead, they waved or honked in support.
So when she heard a car engine rev up and saw the people in front of her ducking out of the way of a moving car, she didn’t know what to think.
“I saw the car hit bodies, legs in the air,” she said. “You try to grab the people closest to you and take shelter.”