Tag: Unite the Right rally

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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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‘Disturbing’: Documentary looks at Unite the Right’s anti-Semitism

Larry Sabato’s Center for Politics produced the documentary "Charlottesville," a real-life horror story that took place in August 2017. The movie screens at the Virginia Film Fest on Saturday, November 3, at the Paramount Theater. Courtesy UVA

The most frightening movie on this year’s Virginia Film Festival schedule doesn’t feature supernatural ghouls, but it had Larry Sabato shaken. Charlottesville is the real-life horror story that took place on UVA’s Grounds and in city streets when white supremacists and neo-Nazis came to town in August 2017.

“We have people and film footage no one else has,” says Sabato, whose Center for Politics produced the documentary. While racism is obviously a theme, “We also focus on the deep-seated anti-Semitism in the white nationalist movement.”

Sabato notes that he didn’t hear any anti-African American chants as the Unite the Righters marched through Grounds.

“It was all about Jews,” he says. The marchers are “obsessed with Nazis. And who would ever believe that in 2018, they would seize on Adolf Hitler as a hero?”

Most shocking for Sabato were the chants: “Jews will not replace us.” “Blood and soil.” And even, “Into the ovens.”

“People were stunned,” says Sabato.

He warns that some of the footage is shocking. And some of it came from Sabato’s cellphone, which he used to film the tiki-torch march through the Lawn, where he lives.

Sabato says he had about 20 minutes notice that the march was not going up University Avenue as Unite the Right organizers had said. August 11 was move-in day on the Lawn. “I was very fearful for the students,” he says—particularly the Jewish and African American students.

He quickly rounded up whomever he could find and hid them in the basement of his Lawn pavilion.

Later that night, he wrote then-president Teresa Sullivan and her husband. “Of my 47 years here,” he recounts, “it was the worst night ever on the Lawn.”

People will find the film disturbing, predicts Sabato. “We didn’t want to put a happy face on it.”

He adds, “You don’t make it go away by ignoring it.”

Charlottesville screens on Saturday, November 3, at 4pm at the Paramount. It was made with the Community Idea Stations and will air on PBS affiliates across the country in early 2019.

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Riot acts: FBI arrests four white supremacists identified by journalists after August 12 violence

Benjamin Daley was identified more than a year ago as one of the white supremacists assualting people at the Unite the Right rally. Federal charges were filed last week. ProPublica

The photo shows a pale, skinny young man in a white shirt and dark sunglasses, face contorted and veins in his head and neck popping as he appears to throttle a dark-haired woman. They are standing in front of the parking lot of the First United Methodist Church on Second Street NE in Charlottesville. It’s August 12, 2017.

Last week, the man in this photo, Benjamin Drake Daley, 25, and three companions were arrested on federal rioting charges, almost a year after Daley was first identified by the nonprofit media organization ProPublica. As it reported on October 19, 2017, Daley and another California man, Thomas Walter Gillen, 34, are part of a violent white supremacist group called the Rise Above Movement, and had been involved in violence and rioting at several California rallies before they made their way to Charlottesville.

Later reporting by ProPublica also identified two other RAM members, Michael Paul Miselis, 29, and Cole Evan White, 24, involved in the Charlottesville violence.

All four were arrested in California and charged with rioting and conspiring to riot, stemming from both the tiki-torch march through UVA Grounds on August 11 and the downtown brawls on August 12, according the Department of Justice.

At a Charlottesville press conference October 2, U.S. Attorney Thomas Cullen described them as a “militant white supremacist group” and “serial rioters” who came “ready to do street battle,” and who committed multiple acts of violence here.

In an interview, ProPublica reporter A.C. Thompson said RAM was a “sort of post-skinhead group that models itself on neo-fascists from Europe.” Unlike many of the current crop of white supremacists who spend their time online writing screeds or creating memes, RAM members go the gym and “have a clean cut, athletic look,” says Thompson. They’ve absorbed members from some of the most dangerous groups, he says, and are on the “really violent, street-based edge of the neo-white supremacist movement.”

The group was featured in a ProPublica/Frontline documentary called “Documenting Hate: Charlottesville” that aired on PBS August 7.

On October 2, Cullen gave a nod to the ProPublica and Frontline efforts, but said the federal investigation began more than a year ago, immediately following August 12. Part of the more than yearlong delay in filing charges was because the FBI and Virginia State Police had to sift through “an incredible volume and amount of digital evidence,” as well as press accounts—more than what investigators had at the Boston Marathon bombing, said Cullen. “We’ve laid out a pretty compelling account,” he added.

According to the complaint, RAM propaganda incorporates “fascistic themes of emasculated young white men needing to reclaim their identities through learning to fight and engaging in purifying violence,” which they had done at pro-Trump political rallies-turned-riots in Berkeley and Huntington Beach, California.

The four took part in the “Jews will not replace us” torch march through UVA, and White can be seen “using his torch as a weapon on at least two occasions during the melee,” says the complaint. And on Facebook, Daley boasted of hitting five people, but described the rally the next day as “a HUGE failure.”

On August 12, Daley and his pals can be seen in videos punching, kicking, and head-butting counterprotesters on Second Street NE between High and Jefferson streets, according to court documents. White allegedly head-butted a collar-wearing clergyman and a female counterprotester, whose bloodstained face is included in a photograph in the complaint.

Miselis, a doctoral student at UCLA with a U.S. government security clearance, “appears to be shoving an African American to the ground and then striking him,” says the complaint. It also notes that in the same ProPublica video, Miselis kicked the man as he’s falling to the ground, while Daley is seen grabbing a female counterprotester by the neck and “body slamming her to the ground.” Miselis, who after the rally went back to work as an engineer at defense contractor Northrop Grumman, lost his job a day after being exposed in the ProPublica/Frontline documentary.     

ProPublica “did a fantastic job in piecing together some of the organized activities that occurred on August 11 and August 12, and the work that they did was certainly reviewed by our office as a starting point to understand a little bit about this particular group,” said Cullen.

To date, the majority of the white supremacists arrested on August 11- and 12-related charges, including three of the four men arrested for attacking local resident DeAndre Harris in the Market Street Parking Garage, were first identified by journalists and activists like The Intercept’s Shaun King, who combed through photos, video footage, and social media posts.

Local activist Jalane Schmidt, a religious studies professor at UVA, says that even before the Unite the Right rally, in hopes of getting the permit revoked, activists gave police a 22-page dossier identifying people who had posted violent intentions online before coming to Charlottesville.

“It’s just ridiculous,” she said of the delay in the arrests. “There’s been a bunch of people who’ve been identified.”

While Charlottesville Police Chief RaShall Brackney was not available for comment, Sergeant Tony Newberry says he’s been working on finding the remaining two men who were videotaped assaulting Harris but have not been identified. The department has issued national press releases and put the men’s images on the A&E show “Live PD.”

“We’ve done everything we can to identify those two,” he says.

Speaking to the federal arrests, Cullen says a prosecutor in his office “literally has worked on nothing else since August 12.”

“We had to convince ourselves the attacks were without provocation,” he said—and that they were not protected First Amendment activities.

When asked why the four were not charged under hate crime laws, Cullen said federal riot statutes seemed more appropriate, but he did not rule out consideration of other charges—or other arrests.

Legal expert David Heilberg says hate crimes are harder to prove than conspiracy or rioting. “The feds charge with what they’re pretty sure they can prove.”

However, federal prosecutors often make additional charges, called superseding indictments, using the same set of facts if other witnesses come forward, says Heilberg.

“This case should serve as another example of the Department of Justice’s commitment to protecting life, liberty, and civil rights of all our citizens,” said Cullen, who warned, “Any individual who has or plans to travel to this district with the intent to engage in acts of violence will be prosecuted and held accountable for those actions.”

Adam Lee, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Richmond division, took the opportunity to make a plug for law enforcement: “It is important for communities like Charlottesville to remember who the good guys are—who is sworn to protect them—and support them in their mission,” he said.

That might be a hard sell for those who watched city and state police officers stand by as white supremacists and anti-fascists engaged in open violence. The independent investigation of the 2017 events, released in December, found that “law enforcement failed to intervene in violent disorders and did not respond to requests for assistance.”

The four men are being held without bond and Cullen expects them to be transported to Charlottesville and heard before a magistrate judge by this week. Each man faces 10 years in prison if convicted of both charges.

 

daley complaint

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Permit-less: Kessler withdraws motion for August 11-12 rallies

Jason Kessler was late for an important date in court July 24—and then he withdrew his motion to have a judge order a Unite the Right2 permit. staff photo

After plaintiff Jason Kessler showed up 45 minutes late to federal court for his own motion to order Charlottesville to grant him a permit to hold an event the weekend of August 12, it took the judge about two seconds to grant Kessler’s attorney’s request to withdraw the motion.

“He’s not going to hold a rally here August 12,” said Kessler’s Cinncinati, Ohio, attorney James Kolenich, who was himself late to court and earned a reprimand from Judge Norman Moon.

Kolenich said he could not promise that his client, the organizer of last summer’s deadly Unite the Right rally, wouldn’t walk around town with a small group of people, which does not require a permit.

City Councilor Wes Bellamy said he was relieved the motion was withdrawn. “I couldn’t be more pleased,” he said.

“We’re going to be prepared,” said Charlottesville Police Chief RaShall Brackney, who still expects a large number of people here that weekend.

On December 11, City Manager Maurice Jones denied a permit application from Kessler for August 11 and 12 events running from 6am to 11pm in the former Lee/Emancipation park, now known as Market Street Park, citing public safety concerns. He also denied several other applicants for that weekend.

Kessler filed a suit against the city, and today’s hearing was to get a judge to issue a temporary injunction ordering the city to give him a permit.

Around half a dozen attorneys were gathered on the city’s side of the courtroom, but on Kessler’s side, attorney Elmer Woodard was alone, with both his client and co-counsel MIA.

Woodard proceeded, and argued that the city’s denial of Kessler’s application for a permit at “Lee Park” was content based and unconstitutional.

Judge Moon had questions about the length of the rally, the number of people Kessler expected and exactly what Kessler wanted the court to order.

Woodard said Kessler wanted a two-hour protest at 2pm August 11 at “Lee Park,” which he insisted was “not a burden on the city.” The attorney pooh-poohed the city’s public safety concerns, and took issue with its “stony refusal to grant” Kessler a permit.

Moon asked if Kessler had an organization. Kessler founded Unity and Security for America, and Woodard said Kessler was its only member. The attorney estimated between 200 and 300 people would show up.

“His deposition said 24 people,” the judge pointed out.

“If 24 people show up, he doesn’t need a permit,” said Woodard. “If it’s 51, he does.”

The city’s DC-based attorney, John Longstreth, said Kessler’s plans were “a moving target” and that apparently Kessler believed his initial application for a two-day permit was “an opening offer to negotiate and then he goes to federal court to get a judge’s order.”

Longstreth maintained that Kessler wanted a redo of last year’s event that “led to riot and disorder,” of which Kessler made fun. “Last year was an unimaginable disaster for Charlottesville,” he said.

Kessler was going on the darkest regions of the internet and “trolling” people who are violent and extreme, said Longstreth. “He has no idea who he’s stirring up.”

It was during the city’s opening statement that Kolenich appeared, and his response to a question about documents he had not filed caused Moon to ask Kolenich if he was contemptuous of the hearing.

“I would like to know why we’re here today,” said the exasperated judge. “It’s just not proper to ask for a permit for two days in the park and then say two hours is enough.”

Moon continued to scold the tardy attorney and said he didn’t want recriminations and name calling. “Your client isn’t here and you weren’t here.” He called a 10-minute recess.

During the break, Kessler showed up, and once court was in session, Kolenich said he was withdrawing the motion.

Afterward, in response to a reporter’s question about Kessler, Kolenich said, “I don’t know if he has mental health issues.” And when asked why Kessler was late, the attorney responded, “No comment.”

Kolenich said he advised Kessler to withdraw the motion because there were issues with discovery.

He also said he knows Kessler “is hated in this community” and that Kessler regretted inviting Nazis to last year’s event, but is unable to apologize.

And in a strange side note, Kolenich said to not link to news site Cincinnati.com. That prompted a question about whether the attorney was anti-Semitic. “Yes, Mr. Shapira,” said Kolenich to Washington Post reporter Ian Shapira. That, said Kolenich, was “because I’m a Catholic.”

On July 25, Woodard filed a motion to withdraw from representing Kessler on the grounds that he “has not met his financial responsibilities and that the representation has been rendered unreasonably difficult by the client.” According to the motion, Kessler indicated he would substitute local counsel for his lawsuit against the city for denying his permit, which is still on the books.

And on Twitter, Kessler said he intends to focus exclusively on an August 12 rally in Washington, DC.

Updated July 26 with Woodard’s withdrawal.

 

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In brief: Red Hen ruckus, ‘white civil rights’ rally, Republican dropout and more

The Red Hen is housed in a historic downtown Lexington building. photo News-Gazette

Red Hen refusal ignites firestorm

When two former C-VILLE Weekly writers opened the Red Hen in Lexington in 2009, they loved everything about the Rockbridge County college town—except its lack of a farm-to-table eatery. Since then, the restaurant has become a renowned fine dining option, and that could be why White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her party of eight came to dine June 22.

Stephanie Wilkinson Facebook

Owner and UVA alum Stephanie Wilkinson, who used to write about literary happenings for C-VILLE and later was publisher of Brain, Child magazine, asked Sanders to leave because of her work for “an inhumane and unethical” administration, Wilkinson told the Washington Post. [Co-founder John Blackburn is no longer an owner of the restaurant.]

Sanders confirmed on Twitter she’d been 86ed, the second Trump administration official to not be welcomed into a dining establishment in a week, although Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, another UVA alum, left a D.C. Mexican restaurant because of protesters chanting, “Shame.”

Outrage—and appreciation—over Wilkinson’s action ensued, and other unaffiliated Red Hens around the country received death threats.

By Saturday night, the Red Hen did not open because of safety concerns, according to [former C-VILLE Weekly editor] Hawes Spencer’s report on NPR. Its Yelp page is going through active cleanup because of non-food-related comments, says the site.

And by June 25, POTUS himself tweeted, “The Red Hen Restaurant should focus more on cleaning its filthy canopies, doors and windows (badly needs a paint job) rather than refusing to serve a fine person like Sarah Huckabee Sanders.”

Trump administration employees are not alone in being unwelcome at a dining establishment. Local “white civil rights” agitator Jason Kessler reportedly was banned for life from Miller’s last year when protesters shouting “Nazi go home” became bad for business.

“An all-too-familiar story in my timeline. A beautiful woman’s life cut short by a violent relationship. The only twist today is it’s my child on the other side of the gun. My son is the perpetrator. The very thing I advocate against has been committed by someone I once carried inside me.”—Trina Murphy, advocate for Help Save the Next Girl

In brief

Xavier Grant Murphy Charlottesville police

Another Murphy tragedy

Xavier Grant Murphy, 23, son of domestic violence advocate Trina Murphy and cousin of murdered Nelson teen Alexis Murphy, is charged with second-degree murder in the June 22 slaying of Tatiana Wells, 21, at the Days Inn.

GOP resignation

Richard Allan Fox, co-owner of Roslyn Farm and Vineyard, resigned from his seat on the Albemarle County Republican Committee, because he says he can’t support U.S. Senate candidate Corey Stewart, who has not denounced Unite the Right rally participants, and who has said the Civil War was not about slavery.

ABC settles with Johnson

Martese Johnson, the 20-year-old UVA student whose encounter with Virginia ABC agents during St. Patrick’s Day revelries on the Corner in 2015 left him bloodied and under arrest, reached a $249,950 settlement with the agency June 20. Johnson, now 24, heads to University of Michigan Law School in the fall.

Cantwell calls CPD

On the same night that seven activists were arrested on Market Street for protesting the conviction of August 12 flamethrower Corey Long, “Crying Nazi” Chris Cantwell called the police department to commend it, chat about the rioting “communists” and suggest they be put through a woodchipper. He was recording as a female CPD employee said, “That’s awesome. Thanks for your support.” According to a city press release, the incident is being investigated.

Access denied

Community activists, some reportedly wearing Black Lives Matter shirts, were shut out of a meet-and-greet at the Paramount Theater with new Charlottesville Police Chief RaShall Brackney, who was welcomed on the theater’s marquee. Paramount spokesperson Maran Garland says it was a private, invitation-only event hosted by the Charlottesville Police Foundation.

I-64 stabber gets life

Rodney Demon Burnett was convicted of aggravated malicious wounding for the July 11, 2017, attack of a woman driver on I-64. When she stopped the car, he continued knifing her in the neck, pushed her out of the car and sped away, leaving her with life-threatening and permanent injuries. A jury imposed a maximum life sentence, $100,000 fine and seven years for other related charges.

Drafted by whom?

photo Matt Riley

Former UVA basketball guard Devon Hall is chosen by the Oklahoma City Thunder in the second round as the No. 53 pick.

Whites-righter seeks permit

Speaking of Kessler, the Unite the Right organizer is looking for a place to hold an anniversary rally August 11 and 12. City Manager Maurice Jones denied his application for a permit December 11, and Kessler filed a civil lawsuit against the city and Jones, alleging the denial unconstitutionally was based on the content of his speech.

On June 22, his attorneys filed a motion for a preliminary injunction to force the city to allow his two-day event and to provide security for demonstrators and the public.

According to a memo filed with the motion, Kessler contends counterprotesters were responsible for the violence. “Counterprotester misconduct constitutes a heckler’s veto and cannot be used as a justification to shut down Mr. Kessler’s speech by the city,” says the memo.

Kessler sued last year when the city tried to move his white nationalist rally from Emancipation Park to McIntire, and a judge sided with him in an August 11 decision that was made about the same time neo-Nazis were marching through UVA Grounds shouting, “Jews will not replace us.”

At press time, a hearing for the injunction had not been scheduled.

Many of those who attended the rally last year have said they will not return for a redo, but Kessler is asking those who want to come to be prepared to go to either Charlottesville or Washington.

His application for a “white civil rights rally” in Lafayette Square has received preliminary approval from the National Park Service, but a permit has not been issued.

kessler prelim injunction memo 6-22-18

kessler motion prelim injunction 6-22-18

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The UVA Issue: Grounds for change

After the torch-lit white supremacist march through Grounds on August 11, thousands of members of the UVA and Charlottesville communities came together to reclaim the space with a candlelight vigil on the Lawn five days later. Photo by Eze Amos

With a turbulent start to the school year, the University of Virginia undoubtedly looks a little different than it did last spring. Although outgoing President Teresa Sullivan and the UVA administration were criticized for not doing more to protect members of the university community from last summer’s white supremacist torch-lit march, the events of August 11 and 12 have served as a catalyst for some policy changes, including requiring non-UVA-affiliated speakers to register before being allowed on Grounds.

Already in existence at UVA were several groups that serve as safe spaces for students, including the Sustained Dialogue Club and the expanding Brody Jewish Center. But Jefferson’s tenet that learning never stops has perhaps never been more clear, as the university continues to identify solutions for issues as they arise, such as constructing new student housing on Grounds to offset the number of students flooding the local market.

Some Lawn residents we spoke with, who saw their school make national headlines repeatedly in the last four years, say their time spent at UVA is impactful on many levels. The good that came out of tragic events, they say, includes meaningful conversations centered on creating change and an unbreakable bond. “[The events] taught me the value of student leadership and made me believe in the healing power of a community that comes together,” says fourth-year Maeve Curtin.

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Malicious wounding charge against ‘Boonie Hat’ goes to grand jury

Tyler Watkins Davis. Courtesy Charlottesville Police Department

A Florida man charged with malicious wounding in the August 12 Market Street Parking Garage attack on DeAndre Harris can thank the attorney of another man for his arrest—and for dubbing him “Boonie Hat.”

Tyler Watkins Davis, 50, of Middleburg, Florida, was in Charlottesville General District Court April 12 for a preliminary hearing, and his attorney argued Davis had been “overcharged” and that the single blow he struck against Harris did not rise to the level of malicious wounding. However, Judge Bob Downer found enough evidence to certify the felony charge to the grand jury.

The moniker “Boonie Hat” debuted in that same court December 14, when Blairs attorney Elmer Woodard, who represents Jacob Goodwin, who’s also charged in the garage brawl, played video of the assault and asked why police had not arrested the then-unknown man wearing a brimmed hat who could be seen striking Harris.

Charlottesville police Detective Declan Hickey testified that he hadn’t noticed Boonie Hat until Woodard pointed him out in December, and he started looking for him. Davis was arrested January 24.

Davis, a member of the neo-Confederate group League of the South, came to Charlottesville to the Unite the Right rally to exercise his political opinions, said his attorney, Matthew Engle. “Opinions I find offensive,” added the attorney. “He had a right to do that.”

Engle portrayed Harris and Corey Long, known from video footage with his homemade flame thrower that he deployed at Emancipation Park, as much more violent and provocative than his client. He said that while Davis was peacefully protesting, Harris burned a Confederate flag earlier that day.

Engle played a video in which he said “two incredibly stupid things happened”: Long attempted to grab a flag belonging to Harold Crews, the head of the North Carolina League of the South, and Harris inserted himself into that. According to Engle, Harris pretty much provoked the vicious attack that left him with a broken wrist and stapled-together scalp. Harris was found not guilty of assaulting Crews March 16.

The attorney also said that “it was irresponsible” to send Unite the Right protesters out of the park and into the street with counterprotesters. Davis walked up Market Street as the two groups sparred. Once in the parking garage, when Harris stumbled in front of him and Davis hit him with what was variously described as a stick or club, “it was not self-defense” but it did lack malice, said Engle, who pointed that Davis only hit Harris once, unlike others involved in the attack.

“He was responding to a threat that he perceived,” said Engle.

Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Nina Antony disagreed. “Mr. Davis struck an individual who was unarmed and on the ground,” she said. “That in and of itself is malice.”

Before his ruling, Downer noted, “This court has viewed so many videos from so many angles,” and some shown April 12 had not been shown in other preliminary hearings. There was “horrible behavior” on the part of many people, he observed.

He said he didn’t think Davis was justified in striking Harris. “I think it was malicious,” and he said he found probable cause to certify the charge to the grand jury.

Downer allowed a bond hearing for Davis. Attorney Bernadette Donovan said her client was 50 years old with “absolutely no record.” Davis was raised in Lynchburg, where he met the woman to whom he’s been married 25 years, she said. Davis was a service technician for Comcast, had passed a background check for his job that had him going into people’s homes, and he was the family’s main breadwinner.

Holly Davis testified that her husband was funny and honest.

Over the prosecution’s objection, Downer agreed to a $5,000 bond on the condition that the commonwealth’s attorney could vet a home electronic monitoring system first. If approved, Davis could only leave his house for work, medical appointments for himself or his son, court or to meet with his attorneys.

“We requested he sign a waiver of extradition,” says Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania.

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Watching their backs: Cantwell’s request for change of venue and special prosecutor denied

Chris Cantwell, center, and his security detail with Gregory Conte and Eli Mosley is led by attorney Elmer Woodard, right, into Albemarle Circuit Court. Staff photo

 

Another high-profile case went through Albemarle County Circuit Court on January 31, where motions for a self-proclaimed racist who found himself in trouble after the weekend of the Unite the Right rally had two motions denied and one granted.

Christopher Cantwell is accused of using a caustic substance on counterprotesters at the August 11 brawl between torch-wielding white supremacists and anti-racists at the University of Virginia.

Defense attorney Elmer Woodard, who represents several of the alt-right men facing charges from the deadly mid-August weekend, said Cantwell won’t be able to get a fair trial in Albemarle County. He asked to take his client’s trial, which is scheduled exactly six months after August 12, to a different locality.

“Mr. Cantwell’s got some men with him because it’s dangerous for him to move around Charlottesville,” Woodard told Judge Cheryl Higgins. When Cantwell entered circuit court that day, he was accompanied by an entourage that included Woodard, the attorney’s assistant and former Identity Evropa leader Eli Mosley.

Because Cantwell has such a high profile, Woodard said he expects a mob scene at each hearing—like the one at Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler’s August 13 press conference, where he was tackled to the ground and rescued by police.

The attorney told the judge before he and the suited men entered the building, they hid in the general district court “because we’re vulnerable.” He apparently scanned the vicinity before leading the group from one courthouse into the other. “My assistant, his job is to look behind me,” Woodard added.

Aside from this reporter and one man waiting for his own hearing, no one was outside the courthouses. “Who are those guys?” the man asked after Cantwell and his apparent security detail entered the building and the door closed behind them.

Among the entourage was Gregory Conte, who identifies himself in his Twitter bio as a Tyr 1 Security employee and the director of operations at the National Policy Institute, Richard Spencer’s white nationalist think tank based in Alexandria.

Conte formed the security company with his partner, Brian Brathovd, who is reportedly Spencer’s bodyguard. Conte never entered the courtroom, but stayed in the lobby where he appeared to be guarding a black box full of cell phones, which are prohibited inside.

In court, Woodard noted several instances of what he called “prejudice and excitement” from the local community, including press coverage from NBC29 and WINA and a publication he called “Charlottesville Today.”

He said the cars of alt-right members who came to support Cantwell at his November 9 preliminary hearing were towed. The cars were parked in a private church lot, and sources say the church had the vehicles removed.

“I used a transport service so my car can’t be traced,” Woodard said. He alleged that a woman tried to smuggle a steak knife into one of another client’s hearings in Charlottesville General District Court, and she told deputies the metal detector was beeping because she had a hip replacement.

For the second time that week in Albemarle Circuit Court, an attorney expressed worry about “sleeper activists” who could sit on the jury with the intention of convicting his client.

The day before Cantwell’s hearing, Kessler’s attorney expressed the same concern. The judge denied Kessler’s motion to move his trial out of Albemarle, and she did the same for the so-called “Crying Nazi,” who was given that name after he posted a tearful video to the web before turning himself in to Lynchburg police in August.

“Well, first of all, I’m not a Nazi,” Cantwell said in a jail interview in September. “I came down [to Charlottesville] because I think that I fucking have rights and that I don’t deserve my fucking race to be exterminated from the planet. Not everybody who’s skeptical of Jews is a fucking socialist, okay?”

Judge Higgins also denied his attorney’s request for a special prosecutor for the three-day trial, though Woodard explained that he may want to call Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Tracci as a witness, resulting in a mistrial and “a very, very, very upset judge.”

Depending on the answers from witnesses Emily Gorcenski and Kristopher Goad—who originally made statements that Cantwell sprayed them with pepper spray on August 11—Woodard said he’d like to question Tracci about some of their previous testimony.

Legal expert David Heilberg says calling the commonwealth’s attorney as a witness “is extremely rare and it might be a ploy to disqualify the prosecutor.”

“I find it is too speculative,” said Higgins as she denied the motion.

However, she did grant a final motion to amend Cantwell’s bond to allow him to go anywhere within the undisclosed Virginia city where he currently resides.

After the hearing, Christian Picciolini waited on the courthouse steps for Cantwell to exit and called out to Cantwell that he just wanted to talk.

“You have my phone number, loser,” Cantwell spat back at him.

Piccolini was recruited to join the Chicago Area Skinheads, America’s first group of neo-Nazis, at the age of 14.

“I used to be just like him,” Picciolini says, but he disassociated himself from the movement in 1996. “I started to receive compassion 30 years ago from the people I least deserved it from.”

Christian Picciolini Staff photo

The Chicago man, who is the co-founder of a nonprofit called Life After Hate, says he wants to sit down with Cantwell and offer him the same support that helped changed his ideologies.

He adds, “Nobody’s born with a swastika flag under his pillow.”

 

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August 12 shooter and Market Street Garage attackers go to grand jury

Imperial wizard Billy Snuffer came to court to support fellow Klansman Richard Preston, accused of firing a gun at Emancipation Park August 12. Daryl Davis has made it a mission to meet KKKers to find out why they hate him for the color of his skin. Eze Amos

Three out-of-towners who were charged following the August 12 Unite the Right rally were in court December 14 for preliminary hearings, where a judge determined there was probable cause to seek grand jury indictments.

Baltimore resident and Confederate White Knights of the KKK imperial wizard Richard Preston, 52, is charged with shooting a firearm within 1,000 feet of a school. Alex Michael Ramos, 34, from Jackson, Georgia, is charged with felonious assault, and Jacob Scott Goodwin, 23, from Ward, Arkansas, is charged with malicious wounding, both in the Market Street Garage beating of Deandre Harris.

The three men were in court the same day as the hearing for James Fields, the man accused of killing Heather Heyer when he drove into a crowd. The judge ordered increased security in the courtroom, and he warned that anyone making noise would be removed.

Fellow KKKers, including Billy Snuffer, imperial wizard of the Rebel Brigade Knights of the True Invisible Empire, showed up in support of Preston.

Preston’s attorney, Elmer Woodard, also represents Goodwin and “Crying Nazi” Chris Cantwell. The Danville attorney, known for his showmanship in his appearances here, was corrected twice on the pronunciation of the name of Commonwealth’s Attorney-elect Joe Platania.

Platania called one witness, attorney and former mayor Frank Buck, who was near the corner of Market and Second streets when the rally was declared an unlawful assembly and whites-righters streamed out of Emancipation Park.

Buck testified he saw Preston point his gun at Corey Long, who made a flamethrower from an aerosol can. “I heard the gun discharge,” he said, and he saw a puff in the mulch near Long’s feet.

ACLU video

He followed Preston at a distance, and then filed a complaint with a magistrate. “He fired a handgun in the midst of people,” said Buck. “That struck me as an unlawful discharge.”

Woodard, who brought an aerosol can that he shook in court, asked Buck why he didn’t file a complaint against Long.

At that point, Judge Bob Downer interrupted the attorney. “All we’re here for today is to determine whether a firearm was unlawfully fired within 1,000 feet of a school. You seem to quibble about the distance of the flamethrower.”

Widely circulated video shows Preston firing a Ruger SR9 in the direction of Long, who was subpoenaed by Woodard but did not appear in court.

Woodard produced four witnesses who testified Preston saved them from the flamethrower. “There was nowhere to go and I was getting ready to be burned alive,” said Glasgow resident Scott Woods.

Another witness was testifying to the proficiency of Preston’s shooting when Downer interrupted again and reminded the lawyer that the preliminary hearing was only to determine probable cause that Preston fired his gun in the vicinity of Park School.

Despite Woodard’s argument that Preston’s firing was justifiable, that he kept people from being burned and was a “hero,” Downer certified the charge to the grand jury, which indicted him December 18.

Jacob Goodwin, Alex Michael Ramos and Richard Preston were in court December 14 for August 12-related charges. Charlottesville police

Detective Declan Hickey described on the stand his investigation into the beating of Harris, and the identification of some of the men who allegedly took part in that, including Goodwin and Ramos.

Goodwin was arrested October 11, and Hickey pointed him out in a video wearing all black and carrying a shield. Goodwin’s attorney painted a picture of self-defense and said Harris “ran at this man. He had to defend himself.”

Woodard asked the detective why he didn’t arrest another man in the video, who was wearing a brimmed hat and whom Woodard dubbed “Boonie Hat.”

“What’s appalling,” he said, “is that the commonwealth didn’t know Boonie Hat existed.”

He had Goodwin stand up, and the lawyer kneed him in the buttocks, apparently to demonstrate the extent of Goodwin’s involvement, contending, “That’s not malicious wounding.”

Ramos’ attorney, Jake Joyce, argued his client’s involvement in the beating did not rise to malicious wounding. “It might be assault and battery,” he said.

Downer did not buy those arguments, and said under the standard of probable cause, there was enough evidence to certify the charges to the grand jury, which met December 18 and handed down indictments for the two men. As for Boonie Hat, the judge said he hoped police find him.

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Updated: Chief Thomas out, retirement effective immediately

Former Police Chief Al Thomas is still collecting a paycheck. Photo by Eze Amos

After initially refusing to confirm reports that Chief Al Thomas had resigned and was packing his office on Monday and would be out of the building by 5pm, the city issued a release that says Thomas is retiring effective immediately.

Thomas, who previously was police chief in Lexington, was the first African-American hired to head Charlottesville’s police department, and he’s spent 27 years in law enforcement since he started in Lynchburg.

He also received much of the blame for the lack of police intervention and for the deadly turn of events at the August 12 Unite the Right rally in Tim Heaphy’s independent review of the city’s handling of the summer’s invasion of white nationalists and neo-Nazis.

Some of the allegations in the report—that Thomas deleted texts, that he used a personal email to skirt FOIA and that he said to let protesters fight to make it easier to declare an unlawful assembly—he denied through his attorney, Kevin Martingayle. Martingayle did not immediately respond to messages from C-VILLE Weekly.

The report also alleged that officers feared retribution for criticism, another claim Martingayle disputed.

And some had a different interpretation of the report. Said civil rights attorney Jeff Fogel, “It’s clear Thomas is being undermined by his own staff.” Fogel and others have challenged the notion of blaming the handling of white nationalists on two black men. City Manager Maurice Jones is black.

“Nothing in my career has brought me more pride than serving as the police chief for the City of Charlottesville,” said Thomas in a statement. “I will be forever grateful for having had the opportunity to protect and serve a community I love so dearly.  It truly has been an unparalleled privilege to work alongside such a dedicated and professional team of public servants.  I wish them and the citizens of Charlottesville the very best.”

City Manager Maurice Jones praises Thomas in a statement: “Chief Thomas has served his country and three communities here in Virginia with distinction and honor. He is a man of integrity who has provided critical leadership for our department since his arrival. We wish him all the best in his future endeavors.”

Jones did not name Deputy Chief Gary Pleasants interim chief, and says in the release that Pleasants will guide the department until an interim chief is named, and the search for a new chief begins immediately.

Updated 2:55pm

 

ORIGINAL STORY

Charlottesville Police Chief Al Thomas has resigned and reportedly is packing his office today and will be out of the building by 5pm, according to a knowledgeable source who spoke only on condition of anonymity.

City officials declined to confirm the ouster. “I don’t have anything,” says city spokesperson Miriam Dickler. “When I do we’ll announce it.”

“I haven’t heard anything officially,” says Charlottesville police spokesman Steve Upman.

Thomas did not immediately respond to messages left with his office.

Hired in April 2016 from Lexington, Thomas was the first African-American to head the city police department. And much of the blame for the deadly results of the August 12 Unite the Right rally fell on his head in Tim Heaphy’s independent review of the city’s handling of the summer’s invasion of white nationalists and neo-Nazis.

Some of the allegations in the report—that Thomas deleted texts, that he used a personal email to skirt FOIA and that he said to let protesters fight to make it easier to declare an unlawful assembly—he denied through his attorney, Kevin Martingayle. Martingayle did not immediately respond to messages from C-VILLE Weekly.

The report also alleged that officers feared retribution for criticism, another claim Martingayle disputed.

And some had a different interpretation of the report. Said civil rights attorney Jeff Fogel, “It’s clear Thomas is being undermined by his own staff.” Fogel and others have challenged the notion of blaming the handling of white nationalists on two black men. City Manager Maurice Jones is black.

This is a developing story.