DIED TO
THE WOMAN killed when a neo-Nazi slammed his car into a crowd of people protesting a white supremacist rally in Virginia spent her life fighting against evil, her family said Sunday.
“She was passionate about what she thought about and felt,” a heartbroken Mark Heyer said of his daughter.
Heather Heyer, 32, worked as a paralegal in Charlottesville — and spent her free time fighting injustice.
“For her, it wasn’t just lip service,” the dad told the Daily News. “It was real. She was to the point. She told people like she thought. She didn’t mince words with them.”
Heyer’s final public Facebook post, left online last year just after Donald Trump’s election, embodied her spirit, according to friends.
“If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention,” she wrote.
On Sunday, her mother, Susan Bro, said she always felt her daughter was destined to live her life fighting against evil.
“She always had a very strong sense of right and wrong, she always, even as a child, was very caught up in what she believed to be fair,” Bro told the HuffPost through tears.
Heyer, originally from a small town outside Charlottesville, spent the past five years working with the Miller Law Group, a firm that helps people going through bankruptcy.
“Somehow I almost feel that this is what she was born to be, is a focal point for change,” Bro added. “I’m proud that what she was doing was peaceful, she wasn’t there fighting with people.”
A GoFundMe web page set up for Heyer’s family raised more than $225,000 as of Sunday evening. The goal was $200,000.
“Heather Heyer was murdered while protesting against hate,” the fund organizer wrote.
Officials said driver James Fields, 20, intentionally barreled over Heyer and 19 other anti-fascist counterprotesters on Saturday. Heyer and hundreds of others streamed into Charlottesville to stand up to neo-Nazis and members of the alt-right who were rallying against the removal of Confederate statues.
Fields, who stood alongside members of the Vanguard America hate group hours before his attack, has been charged with second-degree murder and other counts.