Heather Heyer

Heather Heyer was a paralegal and lifelong resident of the Charlottesville, Virginia area who was killed on August 12, 2017, when James Alex Fields Jr. drove a car into a crowd of counter-protesters near the Unite the Right rally in downtown Charlottesville. She was 32.

The Attack

The Unite the Right rally, whose stated purpose was protesting the removal of a Confederate statue from a city park, took place in Charlottesville on August 12, 2017. Fields travelled from Ohio to attend it. Later that day, as a group of counter-protesters marched downtown, he drove his car toward the crowd, reversed away, and minutes later accelerated into it. Heyer died of her injuries. The Virginia Court of Appeals record describes eight other people as seriously injured; the Justice Department’s account of the federal case describes dozens injured.

Prosecutions

Fields was tried in the Circuit Court of the City of Charlottesville. The trial concluded on December 7, 2018 with a jury verdict of guilty on one count of first-degree murder, three counts of malicious wounding, five counts of aggravated malicious wounding, and one count of leaving the scene of an accident. He was sentenced to life in prison plus 419 years and a fine. The Court of Appeals of Virginia affirmed on November 16, 2021.

Separately, Fields pleaded guilty in federal court to 29 violations of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, 18 U.S.C. § 249. On June 28, 2019 he was sentenced to life in prison in the Western District of Virginia.

Commemoration

At its meeting of October 2, 2017, the Charlottesville City Council approved an honorary designation for the block where Heyer was killed. In a ceremony on December 20, 2017, 4th Street NE between Market and Water Streets was designated Honorary Heather Heyer Way. The city’s honorary street-name policy limits such designations to individuals or events that “have made an important and lasting contribution to the City of Charlottesville.”

The Heather Heyer Foundation, established after her death and led by her mother Susan Bro, closed on August 19, 2022 and transferred its remaining assets to the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center in Charlottesville.

Relevance to Online Political Organizing

The Unite the Right rally was organized and promoted substantially online, and the attack and its aftermath were widely documented through livestreams and phone video. Evidence admitted at Fields’s state trial included memes he had sent to a friend and posted on Instagram and a photograph he texted to his mother, an illustration of how online material entered the criminal record of the day. The events in Charlottesville were followed by significant changes to platform policies on violent and hateful content, which are covered on the pages for the platforms concerned.