At Least three Dead, More Than thirty Injured Following White Nationalist Rally in Charlottesville; Civil Rights Investigation Opened by DOJ

Three people died Saturday in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a rally of white nationalist and other right-wing groups had been scheduled, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe said.

One person was killed and nineteen were hurt when a speeding car slammed into another car that was navigating through a throng of counterprotesters in Charlottesville, where a “Unite the Right” rally of white nationalist and other right-wing groups was to take place, the city tweeted on its verified account.

Protesters clash with police at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville on Aug. 12, 2017.

(Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Photos)

A 32-year-old woman was killed while walking across the street, Charlottesville Police Chief Al Thomas said. Police were still in the process of notifying her family.

Two Virginia State Patrol troopers were killed in a helicopter crash while “assisting public safety resources with the ongoing situation in Charlottesville,” the agency said in a news release. The pilot, Lt. H. Jay Cullen, 48, and Trooper Berke M.M. Bates, who would have turned forty one on Sunday, died in the crash.

McAuliffe had a pointed message for the right-wing groups that flocked to Charlottesville Saturday: “Go home . You are not wished in this good commonwealth. Shame on you.”

In addition to one death and nineteen injuries in the car-ramming incident, the city said there were at least fifteen other injuries associated with the scheduled rally.

Federal authorities said a civil rights investigation into the deadly crash was opened hours after it happened.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said U.S. Attorney Rick Mountcastle is leading the investigation and has the utter support of the Deparment of Justice.

“The violence and deaths in Charlottesville strike at the heart of American law and justice. When such deeds arise from racial bigotry and hatred, they betray our core values and cannot be tolerated,” Sessions said in a statement. “Justice will prevail.”

“The FBI will collect all available facts and evidence, and as this is an ongoing investigation we are not able to comment further at this time,” said a statement from the Richmond, Virginia FBI field office.

CPD & VSP react to 3-vehicle crash at Water & 4th streets. Several pedestrians struck. Numerous injuries. 1/Two #cvilleaug12 pic.twitter.com/DdHYdL0Uvu

Thomas said a man was in custody and the subject of a homicide investigation. Authorities later identified the suspect as 20-year-old James Alex Fields Jr. of Ohio.

Fields is being held on suspicion of second-degree murder, malicious wounding and failure to stop in an accident that resulted in death.

“I am heartbroken that a life has been lost here. I urge all people of good will — go home,” Mayor Mike Signer wrote on Twitter.

People receive first-aid after a car accident ran into a crowd of protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Aug. 12, 2017. (Credit: Paul J. Richards / AFP / Getty Pictures)

Virginia’s governor had earlier announced an emergency, and police worked to disperse hundreds of protesters in the college town after clashes broke out ahead of the rally’s scheduled noon ET embark.

Fistfights and screaming matches erupted Saturday, slightly twelve hours after a scuffle Friday night at the nearby University of Virginia inbetween torch-bearing demonstrators and counterprotesters.

Saturday’s rally was the latest event drawing white nationalists and right-wing activists from across the country to this Democratic-voting town — a development precipitated by the city’s decision to liquidate symbols of its Confederate past.

Here are the latest developments:

• Seven people were being treated at Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital, spokeswoman Jen Downs said. Downs didn’t have word on their conditions.

• Fields’ mother, Samantha Bloom, told the Toledo Blade, a CNN affiliate, that he told her last week he was going to an “alt-right” rally, but she didn’t get involved in his political views. “I told him to be careful . if they are going to rally, to make sure he is doing it peacefully,” she told the newspaper. CNN’s attempt to reach Bloom were unsuccessful.

• Angela Taylor, a spokeswoman for the University of Virginia Medical Center, said there were five patients from the crash in critical condition, four in serious condition, six in fair condition and four in good condition.

• Movie of the incident shows a gray Dodge Challenger driving quickly down a narrow side street lined with walking protesters. The sports car rams into the back of a silver convertible, and soon the Dodge driver slams the car in switch sides, going back up the street at a high rate of speed, dragging its front bumper. Several people pursue the car. As the sports car retreats, a crimson athletic shoe falls off the bumper.

Another movie shows at least one person being thrown over the rear of the car onto the roof of the silver convertible then sliding down onto the bondage mask.

• Witness Chris Mahony said he and a friend, who shot one of the movies, were walking down the street when he eyed the gray car on the other side of the street.

“It just sat there, looking down the road,” he said. “I thought that’s a bit strange. There didn’t seem to be any other cars stopping him from going. And then a duo moments we heard a car going exceptionally prompt down the road and then it plowed into the crowd.”

• Three other people were arrested Saturday, Virginia State Police said. Two of the studs were from out of state. One of the out-of-state guys faces a charge of carrying a concealed handgun and the other is charged disorderly conduct. A Virginia man was arrested on suspicion of brunt and battery.

• President Donald Trump told reporters: “We are closely following the terrible events unfolding in Charlottesville, Virginia. We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides. It has been going on for a long time in our country — not Donald Trump, not Barack Obama. It has been going on for a long, long time. It has no place in America.”

• Former President Barack Obama, quoting Nelson Mandela, wrote on Twitter: “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be instructed to love. For love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

• Sen. Ted Cruz called on the U.S. Justice Department “to instantly investigate and prosecute today’s grotesque act of domestic terrorism.” In a posting on Facebook, Cruz said it was “tragic and heartbreaking to see hatred and racism once again mar our fine nation with bloodshed.” Cruz called the white supremacists “repulsive and evil.”

• Police began to break up crowds shortly before noon after city officials announced the gathering an “unlawful assembly.” Police officers spoke on bullhorns, directing people to leave.

• The declaration was made after fistfights and screaming matches erupted in several locations late Saturday morning.

• Some protesters fired pepper dump at other demonstrators, state police said.

• Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe proclaimed a state of emergency “to aid state response to violence,” according to a post on his Twitter account.

• An unspecified number of protesters have been arrested in Charlottesville, state police said.

A counter-demonstrator marches down the street after a gathering of white nationalists and neo-Nazis was proclaimed an unlawful gathering on Aug. 12, 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia. (Credit: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Pictures)

Police in riot gear stood shoulder to shoulder behind shields early Saturday afternoon, at times advancing toward crowds, CNN movie shows. Members of the Virginia National Guard also were there.

By one p.m. ET, police had cleared the park where the rally was to be held. It wasn’t instantaneously clear how many demonstrators remained in other parts of the city.

“It is now clear that public safety cannot be safeguarded without extra powers, and that the mostly out-of-state protesters have come to Virginia to endanger our citizens and property,” McAuliffe said. “I am disgusted by the hatred, bigotry and violence these protesters have brought to our state over the past twenty four hours.”

It wasn’t instantaneously clear what led to the fights, tho’ tensions and rhetoric were running hot. At one point, a few dozen white studs wearing helmets and holding makeshift shields chanted, “Blood and soil!” Later, another group chanted slogans like, “Nazi scum off our streets!”

People punched and kicked each other during various scuffles, which often were violated up from within crowds, without police intervention, CNN movie shows.

Earlier, a group of clergy and other counterdemonstrators, including activist and Harvard professor Cornel West, held arms, begged and sang, “This Little Light of Mine.”

Police presence was intense, with more than 1,000 officers expected to be deployed, city officials said. Police anticipated the rally would attract as many as Two,000 to 6,000 people, and the Southern Poverty Law Center said it could be the “largest hate-gathering of its kind in decades in the United States.”

As members of the white nationalist alt-right gather in front of Jefferson statue, counter protesters chant #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/fGmdv7tQwJ

White nationalists wield torches

Charlottesville, once home to Thomas Jefferson, is known as a progressive city of about 47,000 people. During last year’s presidential election, 80% of its voters chose Hillary Clinton.

But far-right activists and Ku Klux Klan members have come here in latest months, outraged by the city’s intention to liquidate traces of its links to the Confederacy — including plans to liquidate a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

The effort developed amid a shove by communities across the South to eliminate Confederate iconography from public property since the two thousand fifteen rampage killings of nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, by a self-described white supremacist.

Ahead of Saturday’s planned rally, tensions roiled Friday night as white nationalists — some holding what appeared to be backyard tiki-style torches — marched onto the University of Virginia’s campus.

Chanting, “Blood and soil” and “You will not substitute us,” the group rallied around a statue of Thomas Jefferson before they clashed with counterprotesters, CNN affiliate WWBT reported. The group left the university’s grounds when police arrived and proclaimed the gathering an unlawful assembly.

City and UVA officials condemned Friday’s march.

“In my forty seven years of association with @UVA, this was the most nauseating thing I’ve ever seen. We need an exorcism on the Lawn,” Larry Sabato, director of the university’s Center for Politics, tweeted.

Signer, the Charlottesville mayor, released a statement referring to Friday’s rally as a “cowardly parade of hatred, bigotry, racism, and intolerance march down the lawns of the architect of our Bill of Rights.”

“Everyone has a right under the Very first Amendment to express their opinion peaceably, so here’s mine: not only as the Mayor of Charlottesville, but as a UVA faculty member and alumnus, I am beyond disgusted by this unsanctioned and despicable display of visual intimidation on a college campus,” he added.

Friday’s march took place shortly after a federal judge granted a improvised injunction permitting right-wing activists to hold Saturday’s rally.

City officials had attempted to “modify” the rally’s permit to stir the demonstration from the park with the Lee statue more than a mile away to McIntire Park, citing safety concerns.

Rescue workers budge victims on stretchers after a car plowed into a crowd of counter-demonstrators marching through the downtown shopping district on Aug. 12, 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia. (Credit: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Pics)

‘We don’t want to see a bloodbath’

In February, the city council voted to liquidate the Lee statue, but that is on hold pending litigation. Two city parks that were named after Confederate generals were renamed, including Emancipation Park, the site of Saturday’s rally.

Saturday’s event has residents on edge, and more than forty local business owners near the park have asked the city to protect them.

“I have a lot of fears. I think most of us are just anxious, we don’t want there to be violence,” business possessor Michael Rodi said of the rally.

“We don’t want to see a bloodbath, we don’t want to see looting, we don’t want to see mass arrests we don’t want to see the police having to turn on citizens,” he added.

Many businesses came together to discuss their rights and how to protect their staff in anticipation of Saturday’s event. Others expect to be understaffed, with some planning to forearm out water and sandwiches to police officers.

“If diversity makes you awkward, this is most likely not where you want to be” reads a sign that drapes in the entrance of Rodi’s business.

Jason Kessler, who organized Saturday’s “Unite the Right” rally, said he doesn’t consider himself to be a white nationalist. But, he said, “we’re going to begin standing up for our history.”

“The statue itself is symbolic of a lot of larger issues. The primary three issues are preserving history against this censorship and revisionism — this political correctness,” he told CNN Friday.

“The 2nd issue is being permitted to advocate for your interests as a white person, just like other groups are permitted to advocate for their interests politically. And eventually this is about free speech. We are simply attempting to express ourselves and do a demonstration, and the local government has attempted to shut us down.”

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