Three deaths linked to rally in Virginia
Charlottesville strike at the heart of American law and justice,” Mr. Sessions said. “When such actions arise from racial bigotry and hatred, they betray our core values and cannot be tolerated.”
The turbulence began Friday night, when the white nationalists carried torches though the University of Virginia campus. It spiraled into violence Saturday. Hundreds of people threw punches, hurled water bottles and unleashed chemical sprays.
Authorities say a 20-year old Ohio man is accused in the attack and has been charged with second-degree murder and other counts.
The Charlottesville Police Department said in a statement Saturday that James Alex Fields Jr. of Maumee, Ohio, also faces three counts of malicious wounding, and one count related to leaving the scene. Mr. Fields texted his mother Friday to say he had dropped his cat off at her Monclova Township apartment so he could go to an “altright” rally in Virginia.
“I told him to be careful,” Mr. Fields' mother, Samantha Bloom, told the Toledo Blade. [And] if they're going to rally to make sure he's doing it peacefully."
She had returned from dinner Saturday evening unaware that her son was involved and had not yet been contacted by authorities. He had told her about the rally last week but didn't offer details about its extremist nature.
“I thought it had something to do with [President Donald] Trump,” she said.
She said he had moved out of her apartment “five or six months ago” to his own Maumee apartment, but she declined to give the address. Ms. Bloom said they moved to northwest Ohio from Florence, Ky., about a year ago for her job.
Bob Rose, 62, who lives two doors down from Ms. Bloom, said he never spoke to the man. Mr. Rose said he had seen a vehicle matching the silver Dodge's description at the house and “might have waved,” but not much more.
“I've never spoken with the gentleman, I don't know anything about him,” he said. “You just never know. Until you get the whole story, you can assume what you want. Was he there to cause mayhem? Was he a white supremacist? I don't know.” If he does hold extremist views, Mr. Rose said, “I don't want to knowhim.”
City officials said the car collision left 19 people injured and said they treated 35 patients altogether.
State Police said in a statement that the helicopter was “assisting public safety resources with the ongoing situation” when it crashed in a wooded area. The pilot, Lieutenant H. Jay Cullen, 48, of Midlothian, Va., and Trooper-Pilot Berke M.M. Bates of Quinton, Va., died at the scene.
Mr. Trump condemned “in the strongest possible terms” what he called an “egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides” after the clashes. He called for “a swift restoration of law and order and the protection of innocentlives.”
Mr. Trump said he had spoken with the governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, and “we agreed that the hate and the division must stop and muststop right now.”
But some of the white nationalists cited Mr. Trump’s victory as validation for their beliefs, and Mr. Trump’s critics pointed to the president’s racially tinged rhetoric as exploiting the nation’s festering racial tension.
Mr. Trump was the only national political figure to spread blame for the “hatred, bigotry and violence” that resulted in the death of one personto “many sides.”
U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Upper St. Clair, condemned the attack in a statement. “Saturday's violence in Charlottesville was an exhibition of racist hate masquerading as political dissent,” the statement said. “There is no ‘other side’ to the debate over racial equality and common decency. The racist extremists who sought and invited this violence should be driven from all venues of public life. Hate is hate, and there is no antidote for it but universal rejection.”
A handful of Republicans criticized Mr. Trump’s reaction to Charlottesville as insufficient.
“Mr. President — we must call evil by its name,” tweeted Sen. Cory Gardner, a Republican from Colorado, who oversees the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign arm of the Senate Republicans.
Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and the father of the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, did not dispute Mr. Trump’s comments directly, but he called the behavior of white nationalists in Charlottesville “evil.”
Mr. Trump made no mention that the violence in Charlottesville was initiated by white supremacists brandishing anti-Semitic placards, Confederate battle flags, torches and a few Trump campaign signs.
Right-wing blogger Jason Kessler had called for what he termed a “pro-white” rally in Charlottesville, sparked by the monument decision.
Oren Segal, who directs the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, said multiple white power groups gathered in Charlottesville, including members of neo-Nazi organizations, racist skinhead groups and Ku Klux Klanfactions.
The white nationalist organizations Vanguard America and Identity Evropa; the Southern nationalist League of the South; the National Socialist Movement; the Traditionalist Workers Party; and the Fraternal Order of Alt Knights also were on hand, he said, along with several groups with a smaller presence.
On the other side, anti-fascist demonstrators also gathered in Charlottesville, but they generally aren’t organized like white nationalist factions, said Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center.