Charges Filled Agains James Alex Fields
In a packed Virginia courthouse, a few hundred meters from the statue of the Confederate general Robert E Lee that led hundreds of neo-Nazis, armed militiamen and "alt-right" protesters to this modest campus city over the weekend, James Alex Fields Jr made his first appearance in public since beingness charged with murder.
The 20-yr-old is defendant of mowing down a crowd of anti-fascist protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer, a local paralegal, and injuring nineteen others after 48 hours of violence in Charlottesville that has again exposed America's fractured race relations to the world.
Donald Trump returned to Washington on Monday nevertheless nether burn down for his refusal to directly condemn the white supremacist groups that targeted the city.
Fields appeared before the circuit judge Robert Downer by video link from the canton jail on a small screen, dressed in a black and white striped jumpsuit, his head bowed for much of the brusque arraignment hearing.
"Mr Fields, yous are charged with a number of felonies, including murder and malicious wounding," Downer told the inmate, who wore the undercut hairstyle synonymous with the "alt-right".
Fields answered in curt sentences equally Downer ran apace through the hearing. The court heard how the boyfriend from Ohio earned a bi-monthly bacon of $650 from employment in Ohio.
The U.s.a. army has said that Fields signed up for basic preparation in August 2015 but was "released from active duty due to a failure to come across training standards" four months later.
Asked if he had any ties to the community in Charlottesville, Fields, staring into the camera, replied: "No, sir."
The public defender'south office could not stand for Fields, the court heard, as attorneys working in the role had relatives wounded in the set on. Fields was assigned a local attorney, Charles Webber, by the court and told he would remain in custody until a bond hearing later in the month.
Police records from 2010 and 2011 reportedly showed that Fields' female parent chosen 911 on multiple occasions saying that she was scared of him and one time reported that he'd threatened her with a pocketknife.
As the hearing adjourned and the reporters poured on to the street outside, Matthew Heimbach, the Indiana leader of the white nationalist group the Traditional Workers Party, held an impromptu press conference. He screamed at onlookers, accused the press of being "liars" and argued that Fields had been "scared for his life" before the attack.
"The nationalist community dedicated ourselves against thugs," he said, arguing that "radical leftists" were "the ones who came to impale u.s.".
As Heimbach continued to shout, his words were gradually muffled by a pocket-size group of protesters who chanted: "Nazis, become home."
The white nationalist, who on Saturday had attended a rally approaching the Robert E Lee statue dressed in a black combat helmet, flanked by security guards, then fled the courthouse, accompanied by a scrum of reporters.
The statue of Lee, in the recently renamed Emancipation Park, was notwithstanding spattered with fluorescent pinkish and light-green paint on Monday as minor groups of activists came to sit down nearby.
Chris McMillan, a 20-twelvemonth-old student from Washington DC, said the statue represented "division and the history of slavery in this state".
"When I think of Robert Eastward. Lee, I think about oppression and enslavement," McMillan added.
After, a 24-year-onetime activist from New York, who would not requite her name, got upward and urinated on the statue's base.
"It needs to exist peed on," she said. "It's a symbol of hate."
The woman had been at the protests over the weekend and said she had been about 20ft abroad from the automobile assail that killed 32 year-sometime Heather Heyer.
"Information technology was intense and I'm all the same shaken up from it," she said.
A few blocks away, at the site of Heyer's death, a group of five women held a quiet acuity, praying by the roadside that was now covered in chalked messages, flowers, candles and a picture show of Heyer.
Other mourners gathered in silence, staring at the route where she fell.
- This article was amended on 14 Baronial 2016. A previous version incorrectly stated that the court heard that James Fields earned money from the army.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/14/james-fields-charlottesville-driver-murder-charge
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