The suspect being held in a Virginia jail in connection with a deadly crash near a scheduled rally of white nationalists holds extreme values, one of his former teachers told CNN on Sunday...
James
Alex Fields Jr., 20, of Maumee, Ohio, is accused of running his Dodge
Challenger into a crowd of people, killing a 32-year-old woman and
injuring at least 19 others.
His
mother, Samantha Bloom, told the Toledo Blade that she didn't know her
son was going to Virginia for a white nationalist rally. She thought it
had something to do with President Donald Trump.
She
told the Blade she didn't discuss politics with her son. She was
surprised her son attended an event with white supremacists.
"He had an African-American friend," she told the Blade.
But
James Fields purportedly had some discussions with a teacher at the
high school he attended in Union, Kentucky, where Fields and his mother
lived until moving to Ohio.
Derek
Weimer, who teaches social studies at Randall K. Cooper High School,
told CNN that Fields had "outlandish, very radical beliefs."
"It
was quite clear he had some really extreme views and maybe a little bit
of anger behind them," Weimer said. "Feeling, what's the word I'm
looking for, oppressed or persecuted. He really bought into this white
supremacist thing. He was very big into Nazism. He really had a fondness
for Adolf Hitler."
Weimer
said he had Fields in classes when the young man was a junior and a
senior. They built a good rapport and could discuss topics without the
student getting angry, Weimer said.
"I
took every opportunity I could to really separate him from that garbage
and [he and other teachers] weren't successful," Weimer said.
One of those opportunities arose in a class called America's Modern Wars.
"I
had many opportunities come up where I could use those opportunities to
clearly show James that these are real historical examples," Weimer
said. "I would do all that to show him how wrong these views were, how
evil they were, how white supremacism and Nazism, there is nothing about
our country that has to do with those things."
Principal Mike Wilson said he remembered Fields as a quiet and reserved student who graduated in 2015.
In
August of that year, Fields was inducted into the Army but he left
active duty in December 2015. A spokeswoman for the Army said he failed
to meet training standards.
"As a
result he was never awarded a military occupational skill nor was he
assigned to a unit outside of basic training," Lt. Col. Jennifer Johnson
said.
To face second-degree murder charge
Fields
will make his initial court appearance Monday morning via a video link
from jail. A judge will determine whether he will be granted bail.
Fields
is being held on suspicion of second-degree murder, malicious wounding
and failure to stop in an accident that resulted in death. It is unclear
whether he has an attorney.
Heather
Heyer, a paralegal from Charlottesville, was killed Saturday when a car
rammed a crowd of counterprotesters gathered to oppose a "Unite the
Right" rally of white nationalist and other right-wing groups.
Police Chief Al Thomas said the suspect was taken into custody not far from the crash site.
"What
the world saw today is not the place Charlottesville is," Thomas said
of the violence that preceded the scheduled rally. "We love our city.
Let us heal. This is not our story. Outsiders do not tell our story. We
will tell our own story."
Police said only that the crash is under investigation and have not commented on specific aspects of the crash.
A
former neighbor told CNN that Fields lives with his mother and his car
was parked in the driveway so much she and her parents thought Fields
didn't work. Fields and his mother kept to themselves, said the woman,
who gave only her first name of Emily.
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