In a packed Virginia courthouse, a few hundred meters from the statue of the Confederate general Robert E Lee that led hundreds of neo-Nazis, armed militiamen and “alt-right” protesters to this small campus city over the weekend, James Alex Fields Jr made his first appearance in public since being charged with murder.
The 20-year-old is accused of mowing down a crowd of anti-fascist protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer, a local paralegal, and injuring 19 others after 48 hours of violence in Charlottesville that has again exposed America’s fractured race relations to the world.
Donald Trump returned to Washington on Monday still under fire for his refusal to directly condemn the white supremacist groups that targeted the city.
Fields appeared before the circuit judge Robert Downer by video link from the county jail on a small screen, dressed in a black and white striped jumpsuit, his head bowed for much of the short arraignment hearing.
“Mr Fields, you are charged with a number of felonies, including murder and malicious wounding,” Downer told the inmate, who wore the undercut hairstyle synonymous with the “alt-right”.
Fields answered in short sentences as Downer ran quickly through the hearing. The court heard how the young man from Ohio earned a bi-monthly salary of $650 from employment in Ohio.
The US army has said that Fields signed up for basic training in August 2015 but was “released from active duty due to a failure to meet training standards” four months later.
Asked if he had any ties to the community in Charlottesville, Fields, staring into the camera, replied: “No, sir.”
The public defender’s office could not represent Fields, the court heard, as attorneys working in the office had relatives wounded in the attack. Fields was assigned a local attorney, Charles Webber, by the court and told he would remain in custody until a bond hearing later in the month.
Police records from 2010 and 2011 reportedly showed that Fields’ mother called 911 on multiple occasions saying that she was scared of him and once reported that he’d threatened her with a knife.
As the hearing adjourned and the reporters poured on to the street outside, Matthew Heimbach, the Indiana leader of the white nationalist group the Traditional Workers Party, held an impromptu press conference. He screamed at onlookers, accused the press of being “liars” and argued that Fields had been “scared for his life” before the attack.
“The nationalist community defended ourselves against thugs,” he said, arguing that “radical leftists” were “the ones who came to kill us”.
As Heimbach continued to shout, his words were gradually muffled by a small group of protesters who chanted: “Nazis, go home.”
The white nationalist, who on Saturday had attended a rally approaching the Robert E Lee statue dressed in a black combat helmet, flanked by security guards, then fled the courthouse, accompanied by a scrum of reporters.
The statue of Lee, in the recently renamed Emancipation Park, was still spattered with fluorescent pink and green paint on Monday as small groups of activists came to sit nearby.
Chris McMillan, a 20-year-old student from Washington DC, said the statue represented “division and the history of slavery in this country”.
“When I think of Robert E. Lee, I think about oppression and enslavement,” McMillan added.
Later, a 24-year-old activist from New York, who would not give her name, got up and urinated on the statue’s base.
“It needs to be peed on,” she said. “It’s a symbol of hate.”
The woman had been at the protests over the weekend and said she had been about 20ft away from the car attack that killed 32 year-old Heather Heyer.
“It was intense and I’m still shaken up from it,” she said.
A few blocks away, at the site of Heyer’s death, a group of five women held a quiet vigil, praying by the roadside that was now covered in chalked messages, flowers, candles and a picture of Heyer.
Other mourners gathered in silence, staring at the road where she fell.
- This article was amended on 14 August 2016. A previous version incorrectly stated that the court heard that James Fields earned money from the army.