Charlottesville: Neo-Nazi gets life in prison for 2017 car attack
June 29, 2019 in News by RBN Staff
James Alex Fields Jr is seen in a mugshot released by Charlottesville, Virginia police department [Handout/Charlottesville Police Department/Reuters]
Source: www.aljazeera.com
The self-described neo-Nazi who killed 32-year-old Heather Heyer when he rammed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters after a 2017 white supremacist rally was sentenced to life in prison by a federal judge in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Friday.
James Alex Fields Jr, 22, had pleaded guilty in March to federal hate crimes connected to the attack at the August 12, 2017, Unite the Right rally. In exchange, prosecutors dropped their request for the death penalty. His attorneys asked for a sentence less than life. He will be sentenced next month on separate state charges.
Before the judge handed down his sentence, Fields, accompanied by one of his lawyers, walked to a podium in the courtroom and spoke.
“I apologise for the hurt and loss I’ve caused,” he said, later adding, “every day I think about how things could have gone differently and how I regret my actions. I’m sorry.”
Fields’s comment came after more than a dozen survivors of and witnesses to the attack delivered emotional testimony about the physical and psychological wounds they had received as a result of the events that day.
