Chaos and violence erupted in Charlottesville, VA on Saturday after hundreds of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members — staged what they described as their largest rally in decades to “take America back.” Counter-protesters clashed with them in the streets, which led to deadly violence as one 32-year-old woman was killed and 19 others injured, when a car plowed deliberately into a crowd of people.
Video recorded at the scene of the car crash shows a 2010 gray Dodge Challenger accelerating into crowds on a pedestrian mall, sending bodies flying — and then reversing at high speed, hitting yet more people. Witnesses said the street was filled with people opposed to the white nationalists who had come to town bearing Confederate flags and anti-Semitic epithets.
Hours later, two state police officers died when their helicopter crashed at the outskirts of town. State police said their Bell 407 helicopter was assisting with the unrest in Charlottesville. Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), who had declared a state of emergency, said at an evening news conference that he had a message for “all the white supremacists and the Nazis who came into Charlottesville today: Go home. You are not wanted in this great commonwealth.”
Maurice Jones, Charlottesville’s city manager, looked stricken as he spoke. “Hate came to our town today in a way that we had feared but we had never really let ourselves imagine would,” he said.
“I am heartbroken that a life has been lost here,” Charlottesville Mayor Michael Signer (D) said in a tweet. “I urge all people of good will — go home.”
In an emergency meeting Saturday evening, the Charlottesville City Council voted unanimously to give police the power to suspend the constitution and enact a curfew or otherwise restrict assembly to protect public safety.
The driver of the Challenger, James Alex Fields Jr., 20, of Ohio, was arrested and charged with one count of second-degree murder, three counts of malicious wounding, and one count of hit-and-run attended failure to stop with injury, police said. He is being held without bail and is scheduled to be arraigned Monday. Three other men were arrested in connection with violence earlier in the day. The FBI field office in Richmond and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Western District of Virginia said late Saturday they have opened a civil rights investigation into the deadly car crash.
“The violence and deaths in Charlottesville strike at the heart of American law and justice,” U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. “When such actions arise from racial bigotry and hatred, they betray our core values and cannot be tolerated.”
Angela Taylor, a spokeswoman for the University of Virginia Medical Center, said 19 others were brought to the hospital in the early afternoon after the car barreled through the pedestrian mall. Five were in critical condition as of Saturday evening. Another 14 people were hurt in street brawls, city officials said. Earlier, police evacuated a downtown park as rallygoers and counter protesters traded blows and hurled bottles and chemical irritants at one another, putting an end to the noon rally before it officially began.
Despite the decision to quash the rally, clashes continued on side streets and throughout downtown, including the pedestrian mall at Water and Fourth streets where the Challenger slammed into counter protesters and two other cars in the early afternoon, sending bystanders running and screaming.
Elected leaders in Virginia and elsewhere urged peace, blasting the white supremacist views on display in Charlottesville as ugly.
Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, a Trump supporter who was in Charlottesville on Saturday, quickly replied. “I would recommend you take a good look in the mirror & remember it was White Americans who put you in the presidency, not radical leftists,” he wrote.
Asked by a reporter in New Jersey whether he wanted the support of white nationalists, dozens of whom wore red Make America Great Again hats during the Charlottesville riots, Trump did not respond.
Even as crowds began to thin Saturday afternoon, the town remained unsettled and on edge. Onlookers were deeply shaken at the pedestrian mall, where ambulances had arrived to treat those injured by the car.
Chan Williams, 22, was among the counter protesters in the street, chanting “Black Lives Matter” and “Whose streets? Our streets!” The marchers blocked traffic, but Williams said drivers weren’t annoyed. When she heard a car engine rev up and saw the people in front of her dodging a moving car, she didn’t know what to think. “I saw the car hit bodies, legs in the air,” she said. “You try to grab the people closest to you and take shelter.”
Williams and friend George Halliday ducked into a shop with an open door and called their mothers. An hour later, the two were still visibly upset. “I just saw shoes on the road,” Halliday, 20, said. “It all happened in two seconds.”
Saturday’s Unite the Right rally was meant to protest the planned removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. The city of Charlottesville voted to remove the statue earlier this year, but it remains in Emancipation Park, formerly known as Lee Park, pending a judge’s ruling expected later this month. They were met by counter protesters at the base of a statue of Thomas Jefferson, who founded the university. One counter protester apparently deployed a chemical spray, which sent about a dozen rallygoers seeking medical assistance.
On Saturday morning, people in combat gear — some wearing bicycle and motorcycle helmets and carrying clubs, sticks and makeshift shields — fought one another on downtown streets, with little apparent police interference. Both sides sprayed chemical irritants and hurled plastic bottles through the air.
A large contingent of Charlottesville police officers and Virginia State Police troopers in riot gear were stationed on side streets and at nearby barricades but did nothing to break up the melee until about 11:40 a.m. Using megaphones, police then declared an unlawful assembly and gave a five-minute warning to leave Emancipation Park.
By early afternoon, hundreds of rallygoers had made their way to larger park two miles to the north. Duke, speaking to the crowd, said that European Americans are “being ethnically cleansed within our own nation” and called Saturday’s events “the first step toward taking America back.” White nationalist leader Richard Spencer also addressed the group, urging people to disperse. But he promised they would return for a future demonstration, blaming Saturday’s violence on counter protesters. In an interview, Spencer said he was “beyond outraged” that police had declared the planned rally an “unlawful assembly.”
“I never before thought that I would have my country cracking down on me and on free speech,” he said. “We were lawfully and peacefully assembled. We came in peace, and the state cracked down.” He said that counter protesters attacked rallygoers but also acknowledged that “maybe someone threw a first punch on our side. Maybe that happened. I obviously didn’t see everything.”
By 11 a.m., several fully armed militias and hundreds of right-wing rallygoers had poured into the small downtown park that was to be the site of the rally.
Counter protesters held “Black Lives Matter” signs and placards expressing support for equality and love as they faced rallygoers who waved Confederate flags and posters that said, “the Goyim know,” referring to non-Jewish people, and “the Jewish media is going down.”
“No Trump! No KKK! No fascist USA!” the counter protesters chanted. Michael Von Kotch, a Pennsylvania resident who called himself a Nazi, said the rally made him “proud to be white.” He said that he’s long held white supremacist views and that Trump’s election has “emboldened” him and the members of his own Nazi group. “We are assembled to defend our history, our heritage and to protect our race to the last man,” Von Kotch said, wearing a protective helmet and sporting a wooden shield and a broken pool cue. “We came here to stand up for the white race.”
Naundi Cook, 23, who is black, said that she came to Saturday’s counter protests to “support my people” but that she’s never seen something like this before. When violence broke out, she started shaking and got goose bumps. “I’ve seen people walking around with tear gas all over their face, all over their clothes. People getting Maced, fighting,” she said. “I didn’t want to be next.” Cook said she couldn’t sit back and watch white nationalists descend on her town. She has a 3-year-old daughter to stand up for, she said. “Right now, I’m not sad,” she said once the protests dispersed. “I’m a little more empowered. All these people and support, I feel like we’re on top right now because of all the support that we have.”
America is on the brink of a civil war with political and racial elements. “And the earth was filled with violence.” Genesis 6:11 “And as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.” Luke 17:26
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