Man charged over white supremacist rally car death due in court
A man accused of ploughing his car into counter-protesters at a white nationalist rally in Virginia is set to make his first court appearance.
Colonel Martin Kumer, superintendent at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail, said 20-year-old James Alex Fields Jr will face a bond hearing on Monday morning.
Fields is charged with second-degree murder and other counts after authorities say he drove his silver Dodge Challenger into the crowd in Charlottesville on Saturday, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring at least 19 other people.
Fields has been in custody since Saturday. Jail officials told the Associated Press they do not know if he has obtained a lawyer.
A high school teacher said Fields was fascinated with Nazism, idolised Adolf Hitler and had been singled out by school officials in the 9th grade for his "deeply held, radical" convictions on race.
Fields also confided that he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was younger and had been prescribed an anti-psychotic medication, Derek Weimer said.
In high school, Fields was an "average" student, but had a keen interest in military history, Hitler, and Nazi Germany, said Mr Weimer, his social studies teacher at Randall K Cooper school in Union, Kentucky.
"Once you talked to James for a while, you would start to see that sympathy towards Nazism, that idolisation of Hitler, that belief in white supremacy," Mr Weimer said.
"It would start to creep out."
A Virginia State Police helicopter sent in a large-scale police response to the violence on Saturday then crashed into woods outside the town, killing both troopers on board.
Fields had been photographed hours earlier carrying the emblem of Vanguard America, one of the white supremacist hate groups that organised the "take America back" campaign sparked by the removal of a Confederate statue.
The group denied any association with Fields, even as a separate hate group that organised Saturday's rally pledged on social media to stage future events that would be "bigger than Charlottesville".
The mayor of Charlottesville, political leaders, activists and community organisers around the US planned rallies, vigils and education campaigns to combat the hate groups.
They also urged US President Donald Trump to forcefully denounce the organisations, some of which specifically cited Mr Trump's election after a campaign of racially charged rhetoric as validation of their beliefs.
Federal authorities are holding a civil rights investigation into the circumstances surrounding the crash.
AP
