WASHINGTON, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) -- Workers in Charlottesville, a city in U.S. state of Virginia, shrouded two Confederate statues in black fabric Wednesday to signal the city's mourning for a women who was killed while protesting a white supremacist rally earlier this month.
According to live broadcast from the scene, a crew were gathering around a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Emancipation Park near the downtown with a black drape.
They covered the statue of Lee on horseback at around 13:00 p.m. (1700 GMT) with the help of a truck, ropes and poles as onlookers erupted into cheers.
A statue of Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson was also covered with a black shroud later at a nearby park.
The city council voted to cover the statues on Monday after an hours-long meeting packed with angry residents screaming and cursing at councilors over the city's response to the deadly Charlottesville clashes.
The move was intended to memorialize 32-year-old Heather Heyer who lost her life when a sports car drove into a crowd demonstrating against a white nationalist rally on Aug. 12, which also led to dozens of injuries. The city also plans to rename a street after the victim, among other measures.
The Aug. 12 "Unite the Right" event, believed to be the largest gathering of its kind in over a decade, urged white nationalists to take to streets protesting the city's decision to remove its Confederate past.
They clashed violently with counter-protesters, leaving several injured, until the white nationalist event was declared an unlawful assembly.
A man believed to be a Nazi supporter plowed his car into a crowd of counter-demonstrators, killing Heyer and injuring 19 others. The driver, James Alex Fields Jr., has been charged in her death and with several other accounts.
Besides, two state troopers died later in a helicopter crash before helping monitor the demonstrations on that day.
There is an ongoing lawsuit challenging the city council's vote earlier this year to remove the Lee statue. The plaintiffs argue that councilors acted beyond their authority and violated a 1998 state law preventing the removal of monuments or memorials to war veterans.
The city is claiming that the statue is not a war memorial, while the legal ambiguity is that the Lee monument was erected before the law was passed.
A hearing in the case is scheduled at the Charlottesville Circuit Court for Sept. 1.
