Details of alleged Va. rammer arise
Teacher says Charlottesville suspect Fields showed extremist ideologies in Ky. high school
FLORENCE, Ky. — James Alex Fields Jr. expressed white-supremacy ideologies beginning in high school, but a former history teacher says educators did all they could to change the student’s way of thinking.
Derek Weimer, a former teacher at Randall K. Cooper High School in Union, Ky., who also taught the man accused of plowing a car into a crowd of people protesting a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. — killing one person and injuring 19 — during his junior and senior years, said Sunday he saw such ideologies in conversations with the student.
Mr. Weimer, a social studies teacher, told The Blade of Toledo, Ohio, that he always tried to relate historical or current events to the conversation.
“I felt it my mission to explain how vile the Nazis were,” the teacher said.
Police charged Mr. Fields with second-degree murder and other counts for allegedly driving his silver Dodge Challenger through a crowd of protesters. A Virginia State Police helicopter deployed in a large-scale police response to the violence then crashed into the woods outside of town, and both troopers on board died. The 20-year-old Mr. Fields had been photographed hours earlier carrying the emblem of Vanguard America, one of the hate groups that organized the “take America back” campaign in protest of the removal of a Confederate statue. The group on Sunday denied any association with the suspect.
Attorney General Jeff
Sessions announced late Saturday that federal authorities would pursue a civil rights investigation into the circumstances surrounding the crash. When Mr. Weimer learned about the incident in Virginia, he said, he felt a sense of responsibility. “My first feeling: I failed, we failed,” he said. Mr. Weimer recalled that school officials had singled out Mr. Fields when he was in ninth grade for his political beliefs and “deeply held, radical” convictions on race and Nazism. Are search project by Mr. Fields into the Nazi military appeared to be a “big lovefest for the German military and the WaffenSS,” Mr. Weimer said. Mr. Weimer said Mr. Fields left school for a while, and when he came back he was quieter about politics until his senior year, when politicians started to declare their candidacy for the 2016 presidential race. Mr. Weimer said Mr. Fields was a big Trump supporter because of what he believed to be now-President Donald Trump’s views on race. Mr. Fields also admired the Confederacy for its military prowess, he said.
As a senior, Mr. Fields wanted to join the army. But Mr. Fields was turned down, which was a big blow, Mr. Weimer said.
Mr. Fields also confided that he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was younger and had been prescribed an antipsychotic medication, Mr. Weimer said.
Mr. Weimer spoke out Sunday because he wants others to be more vigilant, particularly with today’s political environment.
Mr. Fields, an uncle said, grew up mostly in Northern Kentucky, where he’d been raised by a single mother, Samantha Bloom, who had paraplegia. The uncle, who saw Mr. Fields mostly at family gatherings, described his nephew as “not really friendly, more subdued.”
Mr. Fields last lived in Maumee, Ohio, about 15 miles southwest of Toledo, records show.
FBI agents have interviewed Mr. Fields’ mother, Lucas County Sheriff John Tharp said Sunday.
Ms. Bloom told reporters Saturday night that she knew her son had gone to an “alt-right” rally but was unawarehe’d been arrested.