The man who drove his car into the crowds that gathered on Saturday in Charlottsville, Virginia is a Nazi sympathizer according to the Washington Post. The 20-year-old suspect who allegedly killed a woman and injured 14 people has shown in the past support for Nazi views.
He is a teacher named James Alex Fields, who adopted nationalist and extremist views since high school, according to Derek Weimer, a history teacher who taught the alleged driver back in Kentucky. The latter told the Washington Post that Fields has written a research paper on the Nazi military and was fascinated by them.
«It was obvious that he had this fascination with Nazism and a big idolatry of Adolf Hitler. He had white supremacist views. He really believed in that stuff», said Weimer.
On the12th of August, Fields marched with hundreds of white supremacist in downtown Charlottsville to protest against the removal of a statue memorializing Robert E. Lee, an American general known for commanding the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the American Civil War from 1862 until his surrender in 1865. Quickly the march was met with activists who came to stop them.
Clashes broke off between the two camps, and out of the sudden a car «smashed into the back of the sedan, shoving tons of metal into the crowd and launching bodies through the air. The Dodge then rapidly went into reverse, hitting more people», explains the same source.
The driver, Fields, was arrested and was charged of second degree murder, malicious wounding, and hit and run count according to the police.