CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. - - Charlottesville police have added five more felonies to the laundry list of charges James Fields Jr., the Ohio 20-year-old accused of ramming his car into a crowd of counterprotesters on Saturday, faces in connection to the attack.
Fields was arrested and charged with second-degree murder, malicious wounding and failure to stop after a crash that resulted in a death after the incident, which wounded 19 people who had come to protest a white supremacist march in the city and killed one, 32-year-old paralegal Heather Heyer.
The Charlottesville Police Department announced Friday it would add three counts of aggravated malicious wounding as well as two of malicious wounding to Fields' ticket.
"The victims related to these charges suffered serious injuries and in some cases permanent physical disabilities," the department said in a news release.
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Fields, who attended Randall K. Cooper High School in Union, Kentucky, was among hundreds of white supremacist and Neo-Nazi protesters who arrived in Charlottesville for a "Unite the Right" rally ostensibly meant to protest the removal of a statue honoring Confederate leader Robert E. Lee.
As they marched through the college town's streets, bearing torches and weapons and shouting Nazi slogans such as "Blood and soil!", counterprotesters opposed them. Photographers captured Fields at the rally carrying a shield with the logo of white supremacist organization Vanguard America.
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"He was very infatuated with the Nazis, with Adolf Hitler," Fields' one-time history teacher Derek Weimer said. "He also had a huge military history, especially with German military history and World War II."
Police said shortly before 2 p.m. the day of the rally, Fields rammed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing Heyer and injuring more than a dozen, before hitting reverse and fleeing. In video captured at the scene, a counterprotester's shoe flies off the front of if car before it screeches away.
Fields was arrested shortly after the attack. A judge denied him bail Monday.
