Tag: Kendall Bills

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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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August 12 flamethrower Corey Long to serve jail time for disorderly conduct

Corey Long, center, was convicted of disorderly conduct for pointing a homemade flamethrower at a white supremacist on August 12. Photo by Eze Amos

“It is what it is. It’s no sweat.”

That’s the statement Corey Long gave today outside the Charlottesville General District Courthouse after he was convicted of disorderly conduct for lighting an aerosol can and pointing it in the direction of white supremacists on August 12.

Community activists wiped tears from their eyes and hastily left the courthouse when Judge Robert Downer sentenced Long to 360 days in jail, with all but 20 suspended, after Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania advocated for no jail time.

“I find that this behavior was very serious,” Downer said when he went against the prosecutor’s recommendation.

After the conviction, Long’s legal adviser offered a few more words than his client.

“Corey Long was and is and remains a hero,” said Malik Shabazz, president of Black Lawyers for Justice, to cheers from the dozens of community activists who showed up in support of the 24-year-old who they say protected the town during the Unite the Right rally that left three people dead and many injured.

Shabazz echoed what the activists have been saying since his client was charged: “Corey Long did nothing wrong.”

He advised that in Virginia, inmates with good behavior only serve half of their sentenced time for misdemeanor charges, and said Long will likely be incarcerated for 10 days. Long was ordered to report to the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail on June 22.

Shabazz told Long they’ll be the “proudest days you will serve in your life,” and reminded him and the crowd that Martin Luther King Jr. was also arrested and convicted.

As white supremacists filed out of Emancipation Park on August 12, immediately after law enforcement had declared the Unite the Right rally an unlawful assembly, Frank Buck testified that he heard someone say, “Kill the nigger.” He then saw Baltimore Ku Klux Klan leader Richard Preston point his handgun at Long, who was outside of the park and holding the homemade flamethrower with his arm extended. Buck said the flames were first between 20 and 24 inches, and then a bit shorter.

“I thought [Long] was going to be shot and killed,” Buck said. “I then heard the gunshot.”

He says he saw the bullet hit the ground near Long’s feat, causing a tuft of dirt to shoot into the air. He then saw Preston lower his gun and exit the area.

“I lit the can because he wouldn’t get out of my presence,” Long told the judge, though it is unclear whether he was referring to Preston or another man who can be seen swinging a rolled up flag at Long in a photo of the incident that has since gone viral.

Richmond-based defense attorney Jeroyd Greene said Long had been spit on and called racial slurs that day, and that Long first sprayed his aerosol can without lighting it. He only lit it when he perceived a threat, which doesn’t make a case for disorderly conduct, the attorney argued.

In fact, Greene said two men, including Preston, who fell out of line with their white supremacist allies and moved toward Long once they walked down the steps at the park, were the true aggressors who acted disorderly.

“There’s no evidence that they’re doing anything at all but walking down the steps,” said Platania, who argued that lighting the aerosol can was enough of an “annoyance or alarm,” which is required to prove a disorderly conduct had been committed.

Downer said the state’s disorderly conduct statute is complicated and problematic, and in his 17 years of experience, he’s seen only a few people convicted of the crime.

“I don’t have the least bit of doubt of his guilt of disorderly conduct,” Downer said. “It clearly motivated people to react in a way that involved a breach of the peace.”

Preston pleaded no contest May 9 to a charge of discharging a firearm within 1,000 feet of a school, a class 4 felony that carries a maximum sentence of 10 years and fine up to $100,000.

Long was also accused of assault and battery by rally attendee Harold Crews in a separate incident, but Platania said he was unable to reach Crews, and the charge was dismissed.

In the crowd of activists outside the general district court was Kendall Bills, the daughter of local philanthropists Michael Bills and Sonja Smith, who was also involved in August 12 litigation after Dennis Mothersbaugh, whom she calls a “neo-Nazi,” punched her in the face during the rally.

The video of the Indiana man clocking her has also gone viral. Mothersbaugh pleaded guilty to assault in November.

“He was sentenced to a decent amount of jail time, but, more importantly, I was not subject to the intimidation and harassment that now men of color—especially DeAndre Harris, Corey Long and Donald Blakney—are facing in this community,” she said. “As a white woman, I was protected. My case was settled quickly.”

Bills said she took to the streets on August 12 to do exactly what those three black men did, which was “trying to protect and defend our community,” but she hasn’t faced the same “inappropropriate judicial harassment” and retribution the men continue to face in their personal lives.

“The city of Charlottesville should be ashamed today,” she said. “I am proud to be a Charlottesville community member many days, but today is not one of them.”

 

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Face-punchers plead: Indiana man gets eight months in jail, appeals

Kendall Bills, center, says she's the only survivor from August 12 who has received justice. She's with her attorney, David Franzen, and her father, Michael Bills. Staff photo

 

Two men who were charged with punching two women in the face at unrelated August 12 Unite the Right rally events entered guilty pleas today in Charlottesville General District Court, and one, with a history of assault who was sentenced to eight months in jail, is appealing the conviction.

Dennis Mothersbaugh of North Vernon, Indiana, was seen in a widely circulated video clocking Kendall Bills in the face as the crowd of white supremacists and neo-Nazis dispersed from Emancipation Park. Mothersbaugh, 37, bald with a ginger goatee, came out of the park and swung at a man in a white T-shirt, struck Bills and was ushered out of the area by men carrying League of the South shields.

Dennis Mothersbaugh. Jennings County Jail

He was arrested September 28 in Indiana and charged with misdemeanor assault.

In a courtroom filled with Bills supporters, including former congressman Tom Perriello, Linda Perriello, musician Jamie Dyer, Congregate C’ville’s Brittany Caine-Conley and other friends of her philanthropist parents, Michael Bills and Sonjia Smith, Mothersbaugh entered a guilty plea for assaulting her, with the stipulation no further charges be filed.

Earlier in the week on October 30, Bills was in the same courtroom facing a charge of obstructing free passage at the July 8 KKK rally at Justice Park. That charge was dropped for her and for eight other counterprotesters who linked arms to prevent the entrance of the Loyal White Knights into the park.

Bills described being outside Emancipation Park August 12 to take a stand against hate and racism at an event where Mothersbaugh “intended evil.” She said she was “blinded and tumbling backward” when he punched her. Now, with strangers, “my heart races and my mouth goes dry,” and she doesn’t feel safe in her home, she testified.

Mothersbaugh’s attorney, J.D. Beard, asked Bills if she was wearing a mask, and she said no, although the video of the incident shows what looks like a black surgical mask over her mouth. She also testified that she could have been shouting, “Nazis go home.”

While conceding that his client’s behavior was “completely inappropriate,” Beard pointed out that before the assault, people from outside the park had been throwing bottles of urine and feces into the park, as well as using pepper spray.

Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Nina Antony told Judge Bob Downer that Mothersbaugh’s “violent, extremely hard punch” to a woman elevates the crime. “This is not even by a long shot his first violence,” she added, tallying five other assaults, some of which had happened in other states.

“This is a pattern of behavior with Mr. Mothersbaugh, who goes to other communities to inflict violence,” with no expectation that anything will happen to him, she said.

Antony asked Downer to send a strong message to those who think they can come here and behave violently with no repercussions. She requested a sentence of 12 months—the maximum for a Class 1 misdemeanor—with six months suspended.

But Downer, who has seen a seemingly unending stream of protesters and counterprotesters through his court from the summer of hate, went even further in demanding accountability. He said the “vicious punch” caused great harm to the victim and to the community, and Charlottesville is now “synonymous with violence and racism.”

He ordered Mothersbaugh to pay a $2,500 fine—again, the maximum for a Class 1 misdemeanor—with $1,000 suspended. And he sentenced Mothersbaugh to 360 days in jail, with 120 suspended, along with anger management classes.

In a statement, Bills says in the three months since “racists were permitted to terrorize our town,” she is the “only survivor who has seen any measure of justice.” She also called upon the city to drop charges against “anti-racist advocates who defended our city.”

Her attorney, David Franzen, and Beard had not returned phone calls about the appeal at press time.

Jacob Smith leaves court after an August 18 hearing. Staff photo

Earlier in court, Jacob L. Smith, 21, from Lousia, pleaded guilty to punching Hill reporter Taylor Lorenz, who was filming on Fourth Street when a Dodge Challenger plowed into a crowd of counterprotesters. Smith screamed at Lorenz to stop filming, according to her video, and then allegedly slugged her and knocked her phone out of her hand.

Downer sentenced him to 270 days, all of which were suspended, and ordered anger management classes and 80 hours of community service.