Heather Heyer
CHARLOTTESVILLE: The parents of a Virginia woman killed when a self-described neo-Nazi smashed his car through a crowd of counterprotesters after a 2017 white supremacist rally recounted the pain of losing their daughter at the killer's sentencing hearing on Friday.
Prosecutors have urged a federal judge in Charlottesville to impose a life sentence on James Fields, 22, of Maumee, Ohio, after he pleaded guilty to federal hate crime charges in the Aug. 12, 2017, attack that killed Heather Heyer, 32, and injured 19 others at the Unite the Right rally.
"It was an incident I will never fully recover from," said Heyer's father, Mark Heyer.
Her mother, Susan Bro, described herself as "deeply wounded" and recounted crying uncontrollably at times.
Earlier, authorities played a graphic videotape of Fields using his car as a weapon to attack the crowd of counterprotesters, including Heather Heyer. The violence shook the college town at the end of two days of rallies by avowed white nationalists, who marched first with torches and later with medieval-style shields.
The rally proved a critical moment in the rise of the "alt-right," a loose alignment of fringe groups centered on white nationalism and emboldened by President Donald Trump's 2016 election.
Trump was criticized from the left and right for initially saying there were "fine people on both sides" of the dispute between neo-Nazis and their opponents at the rally. Subsequent alt-right gatherings failed to draw crowds the size of the Charlottesville rally.
Fields already faces life in prison at his state court sentencing next month after being found guilty by a jury of murdering Heyer and wounding others.
Ahead of Friday's sentencing hearing, prosecutors noted he had long espoused violent beliefs. Less than a month before the attack he posted an image on Instagram showing a car plowing through a crowd of people captioned: "you have the right to protest but I'm late for work."
Even after the attack, Fields remained unrepentant, prosecutors said, noting that in a Dec. 7, 2017, phone call from jail with his mother, he blasted Susan Bro for her activism after the attack.
"She is a communist. An anti-white liberal," Fields said, according to court papers filed by prosecutors. He rejected his mother's plea to consider that the woman had "lost her daughter," replying, "She's the enemy."
Fields pleaded guilty to the federal hate crime charges in March under a deal with prosecutors who agreed not to seek the death penalty.
Fields was photographed hours before the attack carrying a shield with the emblem of a far-right hate group. He has identified himself as a neo-Nazi.
Fields' attorneys suggested he felt intimidated and acted to protect himself. They asked a judge only to sentence him to less than life in prison, without specifying a term, seeking mercy citing his relative youth and history of mental health diagnoses.
