Tag: Heather Heyer

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Day 8: The waiting game in Fields’ trial

The planned three-week trial of James Alex Fields Jr. is running well ahead of schedule. That’s why it was so jarring that proceedings ground to a halt with a two-hour delay December 5 because of a concern about jurors. When court finally was in session around 11am, Judge Rick Moore said some unnamed person said something the day before in the presence of a juror.

He polled the jurors and reported back that no one did anything wrong and it was not going to affect the trial, but at the lunch break, he asked the jurors to not dine alone. Moore had already warned that anyone approaching or photographing a juror would be answering to him.

In the courtroom, the commonwealth has four rows reserved on the right side of the room that usually have been filled with several dozen victims and supporters of those injured August 12, including Heather Heyer’s mother, Susan Bro, on the first row.

The defense has three rows reserved on the left side of the gallery that have been mostly empty throughout the trial, except for lawyers who will be defending Fields in his federal trial facing 30 hate crime charges.

Today his mother, Samantha Bloom, was present. She had been listed as a defense witness and had not been in the courtroom earlier, but now sat within feet of her son as testimony winds down in his trial for the murder of Heyer, five counts of aggravated malicious wounding, three malicious wounding and one count of felony hit and run.      

Defense witnesses Hayden Calhoun and Sara Bolstad testified they’d come from Richmond August 12 to attend the Unite the Right rally because they were interested in the speakers. After the rally was declared an unlawful assembly, they walked to McIntire Park, where they met Fields. They described his demeanor as “calm,” “tired,” and “normal.”

They walked with Fields back from McIntire Park and said some counterprotesters yelled at them from across the street, but the exchange was purely verbal.

Virginia State Police Trooper Clifford Thomas, a crash reconstruction expert, testified that he’d calculated the rate of speed of Fields’ Dodge Challenger hurtling down Fourth Street using airbag control modules in the Challenger and in the Toyota Camry that was slammed from the rear. Thomas also used video from the state police helicopter to estimate that Fields was going 28mph on Fourth Street after he crossed the mall.

When the Challenger hit the stopped Camry, the Toyota went from zero to 17mph in 150 milliseconds, said Thomas.

Lead Detective Steve Young with Charlottesville Police had extracted data from Field’s cellphone. He testified that on Fields’ calendar, he had noted community college orientation for August 15, three days after the Unite the Right rally.

The defense admitted Fields’ driver’s license and prescription glasses into evidence. The defendant was not wearing glasses today, and it’s unclear if he has a spare pair.

At that point around noon, the judge and attorneys disappeared again for around 20 minutes. Upon their return, Judge Moore said there had been an evidentiary motion, which he’d ruled upon, and then admonished those in the gallery to not react to testimony. “Whether you agree or disagree, the jury needs to make its own decision,” he said.

He also said he would be enforcing a rule already in place: that people cannot leave or enter the courtroom during testimony. “It’s just a distraction,” he said, adding that the attorneys had requested the edict.

Yet another hour delay stalled proceedings after lunch because a witness had technology issues, said Moore, who also pointed out the courtroom was about 10 degrees warmer than usual. One juror fanned himself with a piece of paper.

In other cellphone evidence, digital forensic expert Philip DePue testified that the last directions searched on Fields’ phone were to Virginia Healthcare Center at 12:57pm August 12, and to his home, Maumee, Ohio, at 1:39pm. That would be three minutes before he drove into the crowd on Fourth Street.

Two sets of directions generated for Maumee placed Fields on East Market Street. The second set put him at Fourth Street NE and instructed him to turn left on Market and right on Ninth Street.

Asked Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Nina Antony, “None of these routes directed Mr. Fields to go down Fourth Street to Water?”

“No,” replied DePue.

Court adjourned around 4pm. Two witnesses are scheduled to testify Thursday morning, including Dwayne Dixon, the UNC professor with Redneck Revolt who allegedly waved a gun at Fields before he turned onto Fourth Street.

Moore said the defense will rest before lunch, and closing arguments will take place in the afternoon. “We’re still ahead of schedule,” he assured.

Related stories

Day 7: Witnesses describe Fields’ arrest

Day 6: How Heather died—Witnesses detail severity of injuries

Day 5: More victim and police testimony in James Fields’ trial

Day 4: Jury seated, testimony begins in James Fields’ trial

 

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Day 6: How Heather died—Witnesses detail severity of injuries

Marissa Blair Martin initially was unsure if she wanted to go downtown the weekend of the Unite the Right rally in 2017.  However, after the tiki-torch march through UVA Grounds on August 11, she changed her mind. She and her then-fiance, Marcus Martin, decided, “We had to so stand up for our community,” she testified in Charlottesville Circuit Court December 3.

Another reason she went was disbelief at such overt racism in 2017. “I had to see it with my own eyes,” she said.

Martin went with her friends from work, Courtney Commander and Heather Heyer, the latter of whom had parked at McDonalds, the same place the man accused of murdering her, James Alex Fields Jr., had parked earlier August 12.

Heyer was “very passionate,” easy to be around, and “very compassionate,” said Blair. “Heather was always outspoken. She was not argumentative but she tried to understand” where other people were coming from.

The four friends had joined a joyous group walking on Water Street. Blair decided to Snapchat the event. “I wanted everyone to see how happy everything was that day,” she said. “It was not all hate.”

Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Nina Antony played Blair’s video. Although not visible from the gallery, whoops, whistles, a drumbeat and the chant of “Whose streets? Our streets” could be heard in the courtroom.

Antony stopped the video and asked Blair about the woman with a long braid in front of her in the video. It was Heyer—and it was probably the last image of her alive.

In a split second, the scene went from happiness to “complete chaos,” said Martin. Screams could be heard on the video and Martin was yelling, “Marcus, Marcus!” She told the jury about being unable to find him in the “moments of terror” after the attack. “I saw the red baseball cap he was wearing and it had blood all over it.”

Nick Barrell, a captain with the Charlottesville Fire Department, was in charge of the station on Ridge Street August 12. He estimates that when he was dispatched to Fourth and Water streets, it took about two minutes to get there, he testified. What he didn’t know from the message he’d received—”Female struck by a car”—was the full extent of devastation that awaited him at the scene.

When he arrived, people were already performing CPR on Heyer. He noted a “very large contusion on her chest,” he said. “When you see bruising immediately after a trauma, that’s very serious.” Heyer, he said, had multi-system trauma with no palpable pulse and “she was not breathing on her own.”

Assistant Chief Medical Examiner Jennifer Nicole Bowers performed the autopsy on Heyer, and said blunt force trauma to the torso was the cause of death. Heyer’s thoracic aorta—the largest in the body—”was snapped in half,” said Bowers.

Heyer suffered multiple other internal injuries, including fractured ribs that lacerated her lungs and liver, and a broken leg.

DNA analyst Kristin van Itallie testified that Heyer’s blood and tissue were on samples she tested taken from the windshield and side mirror of Fields’ dark gray Dodge Challenger.

Dean Dotts, the second officer on the scene after James Fields was stopped at the corner of Monticello and Blenheim, testified the Dodge Challenger “appeared to be a crime scene.” trial photo

Witness Thomas Baker is a conservation biologist who had just moved to Charlottesville in May 2017. “I’m not an activist, but I wanted to be present against the hate that was going on,” he said.

Baker, too, joined the “joyous” group walking up Water Street. “The energy was very positive,” he said, compared to that earlier in the day when it was “very aggressive, very violent.”

By the time the group turned left onto Fourth Street, Baker was at the front of the group “I heard screaming and thumps,” he testified. “I saw bodies and a car directly in front of me. I was sure it was my very last second.”

The car hit the lower half of Baker’s body. His head hit the windshield and threw him up in the air and then onto the ground. When he saw the reverse lights on Fields’ car, he thought, “I’m not going to survive getting hit again,” and got up.

Baker knew he was seriously injured, but he wasn’t sure what his health insurance would cover. Initially his doctor recommended he try physical therapy, but after more than a month, when that didn’t work, he had surgery that put four screws in his hip, permanent sutures, reattached the labrum to the hip, and reshaped the femur head.

Before August 12, he said, “I’ve been an athlete, a really good athlete my whole life.”

Now he has significant discomfort and doesn’t run at all. The crash “altered every aspect of my life physically,” he said. “Every aspect of my life has been dramatically changed.”

Testimony on Day 6 of the three-week trial ended early, and according to Judge Rick Moore, “the commonwealth is very confident it will rest before lunch tomorrow.”

Correction December 4: Thomas Baker does have health insurance. It was originally reported he did not.

Correction December 5: Baker’s doctor recommended he try physical therapy first and that’s why he didn’t immediately have surgery.

 

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Day 5: More victim and police testimony in James Fields’ trial

“That’s what someone’s eyes look like when they’re dead,” is the only thought that went through anti-racist activist Star Peterson’s mind as she saw Heather Heyer flying through the air.

Peterson had just been run over by a white supremacist in a Dodge Challenger on Fourth Street on August 12, 2017.

Peterson recounted her experience in testimony on the second day of evidence presented to the jury in the trial against James Fields, who’s charged with first-degree murder for killing Heyer, along with five counts of aggravated malicious wounding, three counts of malicious wounding, and one count of hit and run.

His attorneys have not disputed that he was the one driving the car that barrelled into the crowd that day, smashing into a parked Toyota Camry, which then crashed into a Honda Odyssey, before Fields backed up—running over Peterson and others again—and sped off.

Tadrint Washington, who drove the Camry, didn’t realize she’d been hit. She was caught up in the excitement of the activists joyfully chanting, singing, and claiming victory over the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who came to town to hold their Unite the Right rally that day.

“I never seen so many white people standing up for black people,” she testified. But then she heard a “big, big, big noise,” and “thought a bomb went off.” That was when the Challenger hit her.

She’d seen the car before. While describing the process of navigating around the downtown area, which had numerous road closures for the rally, she said the Challenger was right behind her. “Every turn I make, he’s making the same turns because the roads are blocked off,” she said. And as they were crossing the Downtown Mall on Fourth Street, she saw him stop and start backing up. She assumed this was because the oncoming crowd and the minivan already stopped at the bottom of the street meant it would be a while before any of the vehicles could proceed.

But once Fields slammed on the gas and hit her, she said, she believes she lost consciousness for a few moments. When she regained her vision, she said, “I remember opening my eyes and seeing someone on top of my car, and it freaked me out.”

Minutes before, Lizete Short, the driver of the Odyssey, had stopped her car where Fourth Street meets Water Street to let the crowd of demonstrators pass in front of her. When they turned up Fourth Street, streaming past her van on both sides, she parked and got out to capture a moment she said she was sure would go down in history.

But the next thing she knew, her camera phone was knocked out of her hand, her van had collided into her, she had been propelled onto its hood, and was “being dragged across the street.”

Wednesday Bowie, another victim, testified that she was knocked into a parked truck as the Challenger backed up.

“I got hung up on the trunk of the car. I remember thinking ‘okay, I’m getting hit by a car,’” she said, adding that she lost consciousness after smashing into the truck and being thrown several additional feet onto the ground.

Her pelvis was broken in six places, and a fragmented piece of it sliced her femoral artery, she said.

“I was bleeding out internally as I waited for the ambulance,” she told the jury, adding that she required emergency surgery at UVA. On her second day in the hospital, she had a metal bar called an external fixator drilled through her lower half to hold her pelvis in place.

She also suffered a fractured orbital socket on one side of her face, a broken tailbone, three broken vertebrae, multiple lacerations, and road rash. Her pelvis healed diagonally, so her gait is permanently affected, and her steps are now uneven.

The jury also heard from former Daily Progress photojournalist Ryan Kelly, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his iconic photo of the car hightailing it into the crowd. He described being on Fourth Street and seeing the Challenger stop midway down the street and start backing up.

“I heard screeching tires, the rev of an engine,” and then the car sped past him into the group of protesters. “People went flying. You heard thuds and screams and cries.”

Charlottesville Police Department Detective Jeremy Carper testified there were many “reddish brown stains,” or blood, found all over the Challenger, including on the windshield, the grill, the bumper, and on the Fourth Street asphalt. He also identified swabs of “soft tissue along the windshield” of the car.

The detective was assigned to hand out water and snacks to cops who were working that day, but was asked to respond to Monticello Avenue shortly after the car attack, where police took Fields into custody for a hit and run. That’s where Carper collected a water bottle that was likely thrown into the car during the commotion on Fourth Street, and a pair of sunglasses lodged under the rear spoiler.

He wore black gloves as he handled the evidence in court. He opened a brown bag with red tape to reveal the water bottle, and left the sunglasses inside their bag. The car’s grill was also present in the courtroom, wrapped in brown paper.

Carper said he then went to Fourth Street where he recovered the Challenger’s passenger side mirror, which was also covered in blood, and Heyer’s pants, which he said were cut in half as medics tried to revive her.

As Fields listened to the day’s testimony, he scribbled a few notes into a notepad. His face was expressionless. He wore a blue suit and black tie.

After introducing it in yesterday’s opening arguments, today prosecutors made available to the public a meme that Fields posted on Instagram on May 16, 2017, which shows a car plowing into a crowd of people, and says, “You have the right to protest but I’m late for work.”

The defense has argued that the meme is not political in nature. We’ll see what the jury thinks about that.

James Fields, who racked up 10 state charges after driving his car into a crowd on August 12, 2017, posted this meme on Instagram three months earlier. Courtesy of the city of Charlottesville
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Day 4: Jury seated, testimony begins in James Fields’ trial

It took three long days to seat a jury of 12 with four alternates. After all, it’s a national story and the video and photographs of a Dodge Challenger plowing into a group of counterprotesters have been viewed over and over.

The defense does not dispute that James Alex Fields Jr., 21, was driving the car that accelerated down Fourth Street August 12, killing Heather Heyer and injuring dozens more. Trickier is explaining why Fields is not guilty of first-degree murder, five counts of aggravated malicious wounding and three of malicious wounding.

In opening statements today, the legal teams laid out their arguments to the jurors.

Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Nina Antony described a crowd of joyful counterprotesters marching down Water Street and turning left onto Fourth Street after the Unite the Right rally had been declared an unlawful assembly. She also noted Fields, who had turned onto Fourth, was “idling,” and “watching” the crowd of people on the other side of the Downtown Mall.

“Suddenly there is a screech,” Antony told the jurors. “People in the front of the crowd start diving.”

Heyer, “is directly in his path. She is unable to get out of the way. Her blood and her flesh” are on his car, she said.

“This is about what his intent was,” said Antony, promising to present evidence about Fields’ actions before, during and after the carnage.

Jurors learned that Fields left his home in Maumee, Ohio, August 11, 2017, and drove 500 miles through the night to arrive around 3am in Charlottesville to attend the Unite the Right rally, which featured marquee names of the alt-right, neo-Nazi, and white supremacist movements.

He brought no suitcase, no shampoo, and had no hotel reservation, according to his attorney John Hill. The only change of clothes he brought was a white polo shirt and long pants. “It was the uniform of the day,” said Hill.

Hill suggested that fear of serious bodily injury instigated Fields’ actions. Fields had been given a hard time from some counterprotesters, and “anger, fear, and rumors” were swirling around that day. “We’ll tell you why Mr. Fields is not guilty,” he said.

But he didn’t, in the opinion of defense attorney Janice Redinger, who watched opening statements from the auxiliary courtroom on Levy Avenue.

“It’s most critical for the defense to put out their narrative” in the opening statements, she says. Whether it’s that Fields was scared or it was in self defense, “I didn’t get the story,” she says. Typically the defense tells jurors, “You’re going to hear evidence and reasons why it wasn’t premeditated.”

She adds, “You have to grab the jury from the get go.”

Redinger thinks Antony did a good job in her opening. “It’s telling a story,” she says.

She also applauds the commonwealth’s decision to use Michael Webster, who was not a counterprotester and “was going to lunch,” as its first witness. Webster negated the defense’s suggestion that Fields was threatened by testifying that the mall was deserted and no one was near his car.

Antony referred to the Unite the Right rally as a “political rally” that brought people to town to promote a “conservative ideology.”

“I was disappointed it wasn’t a little more hard hitting,” says Redinger. The neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideology “was the whole reason for the rally.”

Antony did promise jurors they will see two images from Instagram Fields had posted in May 2017—that of a car running into a crowd of people.

The judge allowed the admission of two similar images of a car driving into a crowd James Fields posted on Instagram.

The prosecution called seven witnesses, four of whom were victims of the car attack. Most heartrending was Marcus Martin, the man who was shown being catapulted over Fields’ car in Ryan Kelly’s famous photograph.

Martin was visibly emotional on the witness stand. Antony handed him a box of tissues, and Judge Rick Moore instructed, “Mr. Martin, take a deep breath.”

Martin knew Heyer from his fiancee, Marissa Blair, and friend Courtney Commander, both of whom worked with Heyer. In the difficult-to-hear Charlottesville Circuit Court, it sounded like he said Heyer “is a great person.”

Brennan Gilmore, who videoed the Challenger accelerating down Fourth Street, testified that he’d been documenting the day and was standing on the mall when he heard the sound of a vehicle “traveling very, very fast” for the Downtown Mall crossing.  “I heard a sickening sound and saw bodies flying everywhere,” he said.

Gilmore was a foreign service officer in the State Department for 15 years, and said he had training in “high-threat environments.” He’d felt no threat on Fourth Street before the attack.

Charlottesville native Brian Henderson works for the city in the Department of Social Services and he thought he should be in his hometown August 12 after being out of town July 8, 2017, when the Ku Klux Klan staged a protest here. He walked throughout the city that day, and said that in the afternoon, “It was a better feeling than in the morning.”

Henderson had become part of the group that turned onto Fourth Street. He pulled out his phone when he heard “someone singing ‘Lean On Me’ and they didn’t know the words,” he testified.

Into that celebratory zone, Fields’ Challenger zoomed. “I tried to put my arms up and fly like Superman,” Henderson testified.

When asked to identify himself in images of the attack, the box of tissues came back to the witness stand. “Forgive me,” he said. “It’s just a little hard to look at.”

What Henderson initially thought was a broken left arm turned out to be much more serious, with a severed nerve. He also suffered four broken ribs.

Fields, who wore a navy pullover sweater and collared shirt, sat impassively as Henderson, Martin, and two other witnesses described their injuries.

Susan Bro, front right, comes to Charlottesville Circuit Court for her daughter’s murder trial. Eze Amos

The trial is expected to last three weeks. Judge Moore instructed jurors to not go to Fourth and Water streets. He also warned both the public and media that no one should approach jurors, who are identified in court by numbers, or take photos of them. “If anyone snaps your photo, let me know,” he told the jury.

Heyer’s mother Susan Bro, who’s become an activist since her daughter was killed, was in court, just back from talking to Congress and telling its members to “count” because “Charlottesville is not in the numbers of hate crimes.”

Gil Harrington, founder of Help Save the Next Girl and mother of Morgan Harrington, who died at the hands of serial murderer Jesse Matthew, also was present. She said she has an affinity for supporting the mothers of “murdered girls in Charlottesville.”

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Day 1: Seating a jury in the James Fields trial

Lawyers for James Alex Fields, 21, the Ohio man charged with the first-degree murder of Heather Heyer and accused of plowing his Dodge Challenger into a crowd of demonstrators on Fourth Street August 12, 2017, suggested he may argue self defense in early questioning of potential jurors.

Fields, a self-described neo-Nazi, is also charged with five counts of aggravated malicious wounding, three counts of malicious wounding and one count of leaving the scene. He appeared in court unshaved and wearing a dark suit and tie.

The case—and the swarms of white supremacists and neo-Nazis in the streets of Charlottesville for the Unite the Right rally—made national news. Fields’ attorney, former commonwealth’s attorney Denise Lunsford, earlier had requested a change of venue. Judge Rick Moore took the motion under advisement, but seemed confident he could find 12 impartial jurors and four alternates.

Questionnaires went out to 360 potential jurors, the largest pool ever in Charlottesville, and by 10am November 26, around 60 were sitting in Charlottesville Circuit Court.

Jury selection got off to a slow start. Potential jurors were put in a group of 28 for the first round of questioning to determine juror bias. One was dismissed because she no longer lived in Charlottesville.

Nearly all of the 28 raised their hands when asked if they’d heard about the case through the media.

The prosecution said it planned to call 40 witnesses, including victims Marcus Martin and Marissa Blair, and former Daily Progress reporter Ryan Kelly, whose photo of the Fourth Street crash won a Pulitzer prize.

Lunsford listed around 15 possible witnesses, including Officer Tammy Shifflett, the school resource officer who left her position blocking Fourth Street at Market when she became fearful for her personal safety, and Fields’ mother, Samantha Bloom, who has called police in the past because she was frightened by her son’s behavior.

The trial is expected to last three weeks.

 

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Not healed: August 12 survivors ask for help

Tay Washington, who was sitting in her car on Fourth Street when it was struck by James Fields’ car on August 12, 2017, spoke at an event to raise money for Heal Charlottesville, which provides financial assistance to victims of the attack. EZE AMOS

By Jonathan Haynes

The vaulted sanctuary of First United Methodist Church fell silent Friday night as survivors of the vehicular assault that killed Heather Heyer spoke one by one about their paths to recovery. Survivors organized the event to raise money for Heal Charlottesville, a local charity that provides financial assistance to people harmed by Unite the Right protesters on August 11 and 12, 2017.

Kendall Bills, the evening’s emcee, opened the November 9 event by recounting the concussion she sustained after a Nazi punched her in the face. She warned that speakers would be describing white supremacist violence and would not take questions, then she reminded the audience that donation boxes were stationed on the lectern and near all the exits.

Victims recalled the assault in graphic detail. Tay Washington, an EMT, was sitting in her car on Fourth Street when it was struck by James Fields’ car. “I heard a big noise, like a bomb had gone off, then I opened my eyes and saw people tumbling over the car,” she said, embracing her sister as tears trickled down her cheeks.

She also said that, as someone from Mississippi, she wasn’t used to seeing so many white people show up in support of black Americans.

Many survivors said they were initially hesitant to accept financial help from Heal Charlottesville. Another victim, Lisa, who did not give her last name, said she felt like she did not deserve money from the fund, but was prompted to accept it after she realized her insurance only covered 30 physical therapy sessions.

“When you feel like you’re not paying for yourself, you worry about becoming a problem,” said Washington, who has not been able to return to work. “It feels wrong to go and ask for more because you found a new doctor.”

The inability to return to work was a common theme. Star Peterson, who suffered injuries in one of her ribs, two parts of her back, and both of her legs, hasn’t been able to return to work after five surgeries and infections caused by the surgical metal doctors implanted in her leg.

Trauma also played a role. “I live with physical scars, though sometimes the more painful scars are mental,” said Courtney Commander, a friend of Heyer’s who went to the August 2017 rally with her. For her part, Al Bowie was skeptical of receiving help after spending time in the hospital, which she found more traumatic than the attack itself.

While it wasn’t mentioned at the event, many survivors of the August 12 attacks have been bracing themselves for James Fields’ upcoming trial. The 21-year-old from Ohio, who is accused of driving into a crowd of protesters, will begin a three-week trial for first-degree murder and malicious woundings in Charlottesville Circuit Court on November 26. He also faces 30 federal hate crime charges.

Despite all the pain and trauma, the sense of community that emerged after the attacks was a common thread. “I had the privilege of confronting fascism alongside some of the most beautiful people I’ve met in my life,” said Peterson. Bills echoed this sentiment, saying, “The most powerful thing of the summer was what my friends were able to bring out of me. That my sister, community, best friends stepped up with me.”

Still, the tone was urgent. Heal Charlottesville would need more funding to continue its work. Peterson implored people to donate to the organization, which paid for her rent, groceries, and medical bills in the aftermath of the assault. “They don’t have enough to help victims for as long as they need,” she said. “I want to ask Charlottesville to keep walking by my side.”

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The final first: Heather Heyer’s mother channels her grief

The death of her daughter has galvanized Susan Bro to take up the fight for social justice, but she had to get past that first anniversary of August 12. Eze Amos

The first anniversary of a loved one’s death is always difficult. On August 12, Susan Bro took flowers to Fourth Street, where her daughter was murdered. “It’s tough,” she says. “This is the last of the firsts. After this, it’s all a repeat.”

A year ago at Heather Heyer’s funeral, Bro said, “They tried to kill my child to shut her up. Well guess what? You just magnified her.”

In the “surreal” year after Heyer was killed at the Unite the Right rally, magnifying her daughter’s voice has become Bro’s mission.

“The first six months, I was driven by anger and a desire to get the foundation up,” says Bro at the Heather Heyer Foundation, which is headquartered in an office donated by the Miller Group law firm where Heyer worked. “The next month, I allowed myself to grieve.”

She shows a reporter photos of Heyer, with a long braid, taken just moments before she died. Heyer went that day to support her friends and former co-workers Marissa Blair and Courtney Commander, says Bro.

“She wasn’t a leader. She was way back in the pack,” says Bro. “Marissa said they were relaxed and happy and going to get food.”

Heyer was wearing all black because she was heading to her restaurant job after the rally, says Bro. “Antifa has tried to claim her.” And to the question of whether Heyer was antifa, Bro is adamant. “Hell no. She was opposed to violence.”

Bro went on last month’s civil rights pilgrimage, and she says it took that to wrap her head around why Heyer’s death was such a big deal: “the sanctity of white womanhood. What if it had been someone black? Would we be having this?”

From the journey to Montgomery, Alabama, to commemorate Albemarle lynching victim John Henry James, she learned, “For a lot of us white people that went, the realization not only the depths of degradation imposed on the black community, but the sheer volume of it.”

On the civil rights pilgrimage, Susan Bro sees her daughter’s image at Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, where Heather Heyer has joined the list of victims of racial terror. Photo Eze Amos

The Heather Heyer Foundation offers scholarships to those passionate about social change. Bro describes it as a call to action because “hate is on the rise again.” She expects the foundation will point back to the “marginalized community of people of color,” where “black lives never mattered,” says Bro. “That’s what Heather was there for.”

And while Heyer was outspoken about social justice one-on-one or with her friends, “she couldn’t do it in front of crowds,” says her mother, who appears to have no such problem.

As a former teacher, Bro believes that talking to youth “always has an impact.” She told 5,000 of them at the B’Nai Brith Youth Organization three days after the deadly February 14 Parkland school massacre, “If you say hi to me, you have to tell me what you’ve done to make a difference,” recounts Bro.

And when one kid said he was going to be a lawyer, “I said, ‘No, no, no. What are you going to do next week when you get home?’”

She’s working to expand the foundation’s endowment, which she estimates is around $150,000, and she wants to roll out Heyer Voices, a youth empowerment organization to help young people develop their own “positive, nonviolent social justice campaign,” whether it’s letter writing, getting a permit, or dealing with logistics.

Says Bro, “We’re not encouraging marches. Been there, done that.”

She knows it’s kids who are going to make a difference, and Bro admits her ulterior motive: “I’m looking to train the next generation of Heathers.”

One thing she wants to make clear: “I don’t take a dime from the foundation.”

She shows a photo of her home to a reporter. “No, honey, that’s a single-wide trailer,” she says. It has two leaks and “my husband and I do the work ourselves.”

The past year, they’ve lived on money from the GoFundMe campaign, which raised $226,000, and in October, Bro will start to write and speak for money. She’s working on a children’s book and has a couple of book proposals on accountability and activism. “I’m almost 62,” she says. “No one’s going to hire me.”

She counts more than two dozen speaking engagements she’s done the past year. As for media interviews—there are way too many to count. The week leading up to August 12, Bro seemed to be everywhere on both local and national media.

“It’s a juggling act,” she says. “I’m used to government pay and a steady, stable life. My new normal is managing chaos.”

But after the anniversary weekend, Bro says, “I can get down to brass tacks. I have a better feeling of what needs to be done. I feel like I’m on the verge of something.”

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Anniversary weekend ends peacefully, with sad remembrances

Susan Bro hugs Courtney Commander, who was with her friend Heather Heyer when she was killed on Fourth Street August 12, 2017. staff photo

A year after white supremacists and neo-Nazis marched with torches through UVA and violent clashes in the streets left one woman dead and dozens injured, it was with some trepidation that locals commemorated August 11 and 12. The weekend ended without serious injury and with a handful of arrests on misdemeanor charges.

By late Sunday afternoon, the barricades surrounding downtown Charlottesville, which some said had put the city under “martial law,” were coming down, and the 700 Virginia State Police began heading home.

While sightings of hate group members were rare, more than 1,000 police in town created another sort of tension. A student demonstration planned in front of the Rotunda Saturday night abruptly changed course because of layers of restrictions, barricades and cops, and became a loop around university neighborhoods.

And a march from a morning Washington Park remembrance of last year’s tragedy to Fourth Street, where a driver plowed into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing Heather Heyer and injuring many more, became heated when police blocked access to the Downtown Mall from Water Street, where entrance already was restricted to First Street and Second Street SE.

Those entry spots had cops lined up forming a humans-on-bikes barricade there, and marchers continued down to Fourth, where police refused to let them enter. After some heated moments and negotiations by activist Don Gathers, the band of more than 100 marchers split and some went back to Second Street SE to enter the mall through the checkpoint and commemorate the tragedy that occurred on Fourth Street.

Heyer’s mother Susan Bro came with flowers both for her daughter and for the two Virginia State Police officers—Jay Cullen and Berke Bates—who died in a helicopter crash August 12.

“This is not all about Heather,” said Bro. “Oh my dear heavens. There were so many people who were wounded that day. They’re still suffering, still injured. There’s so much healing to do. We have a huge racial problem in our city and our country and we’ve got to fix that, or we’ll be back here.”

Bro brought two red roses for the downed officers, and purple stock for her daughter, which she laid on a memorial of flowers on the sidewalk.

And Bro hugged many of the people who were there August 12 a year ago, including Heyer’s friends Courtney Commander, Marissa Blair and Marcus Martin, the latter captured in Ryan Kelly’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph, hurtling up in the air behind James Fields’ car.

Marcus Martin, a year after being thrown over the top of James Fields’ car, says his wife, the former Marissa Blair, has to walk by the spot every day. staff photo

And as people were dispersing, another standoff occurred with helmeted state police in the intersection of Water and Fourth streets.

Observing from the mall was Brian Moran, Virginia secretary of public safety, who was here a year ago and watched from the sixth floor of the Wells Fargo building the violent clashes on Market Street below, and famously compared the sporadic skirmishes to a hockey match.

Moran said he counted the weekend a success with a minimum number of arrests. “I couldn’t be prouder of these officers,” he said. “We said it wouldn’t happen again. The city welcomed our resources.”

As he said that, shouts could be heard down Fourth Street, and when asked what was going on, he said, “They’re yelling at police. Last year a woman got killed when protesters took to the streets. We made sure there was no traffic this time. Police are trying to protect the protesters and they got yelled at.”

Virginia Secretary of Public Safety Brian Moran says one of police goals was to block streets to protect protesters from getting mowed down. Staff photo

Moran noted that Jason Kessler, organizer of last year’s deadly Unite the Right rally, had just boarded a Metro in Vienna to go the sequel event he was having in Washington, and Moran seemed relieved to have him out of the state. UTR2 reportedly drew around two dozen supporters and thousands of counterprotesters.

Four arrests had been made by 4pm Sunday. Tobias Beard, 42, a former C-Ville Weekly contributor, was charged with obstruction of free passage when police say at around 11:04am, he deliberately positioned himself in front of police motorcycle units that were attempting to provide safe passage for a group of demonstrators in the area of Preston Avenue and Eighth Street. He was released on a summons.

Activist Veronica Fitzhugh, 40, and Martin Clevenger, 29, of Spotsylvania were each charged with one count of disorderly conduct when Clevenger saluted the Lee statue in Market Street Park at 11:25am. A small group gathered around him and a verbal altercation between Fitzhugh and Clevenger became physical, according to police. Both were released on a summons.

And Chloe J. Lubin, 29, of Portland, Maine, was arrested by Virginia State Police on four misdemeanor charges: assault and battery, disorderly conduct, obstruction of justice and possession of a concealed weapon. At approximately 2:10pm, a state trooper observed Lubin spit in the face of a demonstrator in the area of Fourth and Water streets. As the trooper attempted to take her into custody, she clung to another demonstrator. Upon her arrest, she was found to be in possession of a metal baton, say police. She was released on an unsecured bond.

 

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Hope and an apology

At a university-sponsored event this morning called The Hope That Summons Us, President Jim Ryan had a message for the victims of the white supremacist attack on Grounds exactly one year ago: "I am sorry. We are sorry." Photo courtesy of UVA Office of Communications

About 200 people gathered in the Old Cabell Hall auditorium at the University of Virginia on the anniversary of last summer’s August 11 white supremacist tiki-torch march across Grounds, where a small number of students and faculty were encircled and beaten by angry men in white polos and khakis.

The ticketed event was called The Hope That Summons Us: A Morning of Reflection and Renewal, and it began with words from John Charles Thomas, a retired Virginia Supreme Court justice who now teaches appellate practice at the university’s law school.

“Hope gives us the courage to stand up against evil,” said Thomas, who reminded the audience that “light will conquer darkness” and “love is stronger than hate.”

Attendees honored the lives of Heather Heyer, Lieutenant Jay Cullen and Trooper Pilot Berke Bates, who died in Charlottesville last August 12, with a moment of silence. The university’s carillon bells tolled in their honor.

A few sniffles could be heard in the auditorium as most attendees bowed their heads. Heyer’s mother, Susan Bro, sat in the front row.

After songs, a poem and a multilingual reading, UVA President Jim Ryan shared a few words on his 11th day on the job.

“I cannot truly know the pain of others, but I can recognize it and stand with them,” he said, noting that he was not in Charlottesville during the violent events of last summer, though he watched them play out online. “In the face of tragedy, we can still find the strength to move forward, and we must.”

Ryan said one must have the “courage to be candid and open to self-examination,” and with that, he noted that two of the organizers of last year’s Unite the Right rally were, in fact, UVA graduates.

He said it’s easy to side against white supremacists and neo-Nazis, but harder to close the gap between aspirations and realities.

“How do we live our values?” he asked.

To start, he said UVA must acknowledge that gap still exists and admit to the mistakes it made last summer. The university must pledge to learn from its mistakes, and not be afraid to apologize.

Ryan had a message for the victims of the attack at the foot of the Thomas Jefferson statue on this day last year: “I am sorry. We are sorry.”

And with that, the president earned himself a standing ovation.

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James Fields pleads not guilty to federal crimes

James Fields earlier in the day, before he plowed his car into dozens of people on Fourth Street. Photo Eze Amos

The man charged with 30 federal hate crimes, including the murder of Heather Heyer by ramming his Dodge Challenger into a crowd of counterprotesters on August 12, gave a clipped introduction to the judge when he announced himself as James Alex Fields Jr. on July 5.

Each hate crime charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison, and it’s unclear whether prosecutors will seek the death penalty.

Wearing a gray-striped jail jumpsuit with bright orange slip-on shoes and rectangular glasses, the 21-year-old Ohio man, escorted by U.S. marshals, strode slowly into the courtroom. He sat next to his attorneys with his back facing those seated in the room, and turned around twice to peer at the crowd, once waving to someone in the first row, who waved back and appeared to work with his attorneys.

While answering procedural questions in a monotone voice before his arraignment, Fields never tacked “sir” onto the end of his responses. He told the judge he has a high school diploma.

“I’ve been a security guard,” he said, when asked about past employment, and he also said he’s been receiving treatment for bipolar disorder, anxiety, depression and ADHD, which have required “several medications” such as antipsychotics and antidepressants.

His brown hair was longer on the top than the sides, and his beard was starting to grow back from what appeared to be a recent shave, as also illustrated by the sketch artist sitting in the front row of the Western District of Virginia federal courthouse.

At one point, seven uniformed marshals were present in the room with the man who some have called a domestic terrorist. At the Unite the Right rally on August 12, Fields was seen standing shoulder-to-shoulder with members of white supremacist group Vanguard America, and carrying a shield marked with their logo. The organization with neo-Nazi ideology has denied that Fields was a member.

After he drove his Challenger into a group of counterprotesters on Fourth Street, sending bodies flying and ramming his vehicle into the back of a Toyota Camry, Fields fled the scene. Police stopped his car on a nearby street and arrested him, and it wasn’t long before classmates and teachers at his former high school in Ohio started speaking to national media outlets such as Vice and ABC News about the kid who drew swastikas and idolized Adolf Hitler, and whom they dubbed “the Nazi of the school.” Fields also previously hit his mother and locked her in a room when she asked him to stop playing video games, and on another occasion, threatened his mother with a 12-inch knife, according to police reports.

As Fields pleaded not guilty to the 30 hate crimes, an unidentified person on the other side of the room—which was packed with victims of the car attack and Heyer’s friends and family—let out a loud, exasperated, “pffffft.”

Federal public defender Lisa Loresh and Denise Lunsford, who also represent Fields in his first-degree murder trial on state charges, will defend him in the federal trial.

Both offered no comment outside of the courthouse.

“Sad situation, man,” said car attack victim Marcus Martin as he was leaving the courtroom with Heyer’s parents, Susan Bro and Mark Heyer. “Sad, sad, sad.”

Updated Friday, July 6 at 4:00pm with additional information.