Charlottesville car attack
| Charlottesville car attack | |
|---|---|
| Location | Southern half of the Downtown Mall, Charlottesville, Virginia |
| Date | August 12, 2017 c. 1:45 p.m. (UTC-4) |
| Target | Crowd counter-protesting Unite the Right rally |
Attack type | Vehicle-ramming attack, domestic terrorism, murder, attempted mass murder |
| Weapons | 2010 Dodge Challenger |
| Deaths | 1 (Heather Danielle Heyer) |
| Injured | 35 |
| Perpetrator | James Alex Fields, Jr. |
| Motive | |
| Verdict | Federal verdict: Pleaded guilty State verdict: Guilty on all counts |
| Convictions | Federal convictions:
State convictions:
|
| Charges | Racially motivated violent interference with a federally protected activity (dropped after plea deal) |
| Litigation | Fields ordered to pay $12 million
|
| Sentence | Federal sentence: Life imprisonment without the possibility of parole State sentence: Life imprisonment without the possibility of parole plus 419 years |
The Charlottesville car attack was a white supremacist terrorist attack perpetrated on August 12, 2017, when James Alex Fields Jr. deliberately drove his car into a crowd of people peacefully protesting the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, killing one person and injuring 35. Fields, 20, had previously espoused neo-Nazi and white supremacist beliefs, and drove from Ohio to attend the rally.
Fields' attack was called an act of domestic terrorism by the mayor of Charlottesville, Virginia's public safety secretary, the U.S. attorney general, and the director of the FBI.
Fields was convicted in a state court of the first-degree murder of 32-year-old Heather Heyer, eight counts of malicious wounding, and hit and run. He also pled guilty to 29 of 30 federal hate crime charges to avoid the death penalty. He was sentenced to life in prison plus 419 years for the state charges, with an additional life sentence for the federal charges.