Backgrounder: Who is suspect charged with killing 1 in Charlottesville clash?

Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-15 15:44:38|Editor: Zhou Xin
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BEIJING, Aug. 15 (Xinhua) -- The suspect charged with killing a woman in the clash Saturday between white supremacists and their opponents in Charlottesville, a historic town in the U.S. state of Virginia, is said to be an admirer of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, reports said.

James Alex Fields Jr., 20, drove a sports car into a crowd of anti-fascism protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring 19 other people. He was charged with second-degree murder.

Derek Weimer, a teacher who taught Fields in high school said Sunday that Fields was fascinated with Nazism, idolized Hitler, and had been singled out in the ninth grade by officials for his "deeply held, radical" convictions on race, an AP report said.

"Once you talked to James for a while, you would start to see that sympathy toward Nazism, that idolization of Hitler, that belief in white supremacy," Weimer said.

Fields also confided that he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was younger and had been prescribed an anti-psychotic medication, Weimer said.

Keegan McGrath, a former classmate of Fields, recalled a 2015 trip with Fields to Europe during which Fields said he could visit "the Fatherland" -- Germany.

McGrath, 18, told the AP that he challenged Fields on his beliefs, and the animosity between them grew so heated that it came to a boil at dinner on the second day of the trip.

Still, the incident shocked McGrath. He described Fields as "a normal dude" most of the time despite some "dark" jokes that put his class on edge, including one "offhand joke" about the Holocaust.

A judge denied Fields bail on Monday after the public defender's office said it couldn't represent him. Fields was assigned a local attorney and another hearing was set for Aug. 25.

Records show Fields was arrested and put in juvenile detention after his mother, Samantha Bloom, reported in 2011 that he stood behind her wielding a 12-inch knife.

In another incident in 2010, she said her son smacked her in the head and locked her in the bathroom after she told him to stop playing video games.

But Bloom told local media that Fields did not openly express extreme views.

Fields' father was killed by a drink-driver months before he was born, his uncle told the Washington Post.

Fields had been photographed hours before the attack with a shield bearing the emblem of Vanguard America, a white supremacist group. However, the group on Sunday denied any association with Fields.

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