Charlottesville driver previously accused of beating mom

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. - The driver charged with killing a woman at a white nationalist rally was previously accused of beating his mother and threatening her with a knife, according to police records released Monday.

Samantha Bloom, who is disabled and uses a wheelchair, repeatedly called police about her son, James Alex Fields Jr., in 2010 and 2011, telling officers he was on medication to control his temper, transcripts from 911 calls show.

Fields, 20, is accused of ramming his car into a crowd of counter-protesters on Saturday, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer.

Fields, described by a former high school teacher as an admirer of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, was charged with seconddegree murder.

A judge denied him bail Monday after 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.

Fields was assigned a local attorney, and another hearing was set for Aug. 25.

Records show that Fields was arrested and put in juvenile detention after his mother reported in 2011 that he stood behind her wielding a 12-inch knife.

In another incident in 2010, she said her son smacked her in the head and locked her in the bathroom after she told him to stop playing video games. There was no indication in the records that he was arrested.

Also Monday, a former classmate told The Associated Press that on a school trip to Europe in 2015, a teenage Fields couldn’t stand the French and said he only went on the trip so that he could visit “the Fatherland” — Germany.