Deadly chaos boils over in Virginia
Car plows into crowd as white nationalists, opponents clash
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — The city of Charlottesville was engulfed by violence Saturday as white nationalists and counterprotesters clashed in one of the bloodiest fights to date over the removal of Confederate monuments across the South.
White nationalists had long planned a demonstration over the city’s decision to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee. But the rally quickly exploded into racial taunting, shoving and outright brawling, prompting the governor to declare a state of emergency and the National Guard to join police in clearing the area.
Those skirmishes mostly resulted in cuts and bruises. But after the rally at a city park was dispersed, a car plowed into a crowd near the city’s downtown mall, killing a 32-year-old woman, Charlottesville Police Chief Al Thomas said. Some 34 were injured; at least 19 in the crash, according to a spokeswoman for the University of Virginia Medical Center. Several witnesses and video of the scene suggested that the crash might have been intentional.
The police said that the
driver was arrested after fleeing the scene and that the case was being treated as a criminal homicide.
Col. Martin Kumer, the superintendent of the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail, confirmed Saturday that an Ohio man, James Alex Fields Jr., 20, of Maumee, had been arrested and charged with second-degree murder, three counts of malicious wounding and failing to stop at the scene of an accident that resulted in a death. But the authorities declined to say publicly that Fields was the driver of the car that plowed into the crowd.
Later in the day, a Virginia State Police helicopter crashed near a golf course and burst into flames, leaving at least two people dead. The helicopter appeared to have been monitoring the protests.
Witnesses to the car crash said a gray sports car accelerated into a crowd of counterdemonstrators, who were moving jubilantly near the mall after the white nationalists had left. At least two people were hurled in the air.
“It was probably the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” said Robert Armengol, who was at the scene reporting for a podcast he hosts with students at the University of Virginia. “After that, it was pandemonium. The car hit reverse and sped, and everybody who was up the street in my direction started running.”
The planned rally was promoted as “Unite the Right,” and both its organizers and critics said they expected it to be one of the largest gathering of white nationalists in recent times, attracting groups like the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis and movement leaders like David Duke and Richard Spencer.
Many of these groups have felt emboldened since the election of Donald Trump as president. Duke, a former imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, told reporters Saturday that the protesters were “going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump” to “take our country back.”
On Saturday afternoon, Trump — speaking at the start of a veterans’ event at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. — addressed what he described as “the terrible events unfolding in Charlottesville, Virginia.”
In his comments, Trump condemned the bloody protests, but he did not specifically criticize the white nationalist rally and its neoNazi slogans beyond blaming “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.”
Day began peacefully
The turmoil in Charlottesville began with a march Friday night by white nationalists on the campus of the University of Virginia and escalated Saturday morning as demonstrators from both sides gathered in and around the park. Waving Confederate flags, chanting Nazi-era slogans, wearing helmets and carrying shields, the white nationalists converged on the Lee statue inside the park and began chanting phrases like “You will not replace us” and “Jews will not replace us.”
Hundreds of counterprotesters — religious leaders, Black Lives Matter activists and anti-fascist groups known as “antifa” — quickly surrounded the park, singing spirituals, chanting and carrying their own signs.
The morning started peacefully, with the white nationalists gathering in McIntire Park, outside downtown, and the counterdemonstrators — in- cluding Cornel West, the Harvard University professor and political activist — gathering at the First Baptist Church, a historically African-American church here. West, who addressed the group at a sunrise prayer service, said he had come “bearing witness to love and justice in the face of white supremacy.”
At McIntire Park, the white nationalists waved Confederate flags and other banners. As a photographer took pictures, one of them, who gave his name only as Ted because he said he might want to run for office some day, said he was from Missouri and added, “I’m tired of seeing white people pushed around.”
But by 11 a.m., after both sides had made their way to Emancipation Park, the scene had exploded into taunting, shoving and outright brawling.
Barricades encircling the park and separating the two sides began to come down, and police temporarily retreated. People were seen clubbing one another in the streets, and pepper spray filled the air.
Declaring the gathering an unlawful assembly, police cleared the area before noon, and the Virginia National Guard arrived as officers began arresting some who remained. But fears lingered that the altercation would start again nearby, as demonstrators dispersed in smaller groups.
Within an hour, politicians, including Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, and the House speaker, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, a Republican, had condemned the violence.
Organizer’s complaint
After the rally was dispersed, its organizer, Jason Kessler, who calls himself a “white advocate,” complained that his group had been “forced into a very chaotic situation.”
He added, “The police were supposed to be there protecting us and they stood down.”
Both Kessler and Spencer, a prominent white nationalist who was to speak Saturday, are graduates of the University of Virginia. In an online video, titled “a message to Charlottesville,” Spencer vowed to return to the college town.
“You think that we’re going to back down to this kind of behavior to you and your little provincial town? No,” he said. “We are going to make Charlottesville the center of the universe.”