By Joe Helm, Ellie Silverman, T.Rees Shapiro and Emma Brown, August 13, 2017<\/p>\n
CHARLOTTESVILLE \u2014<\/span> Chaos and violence turned to tragedy Saturday as hundreds of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members \u2014 planning to stage what they described as their largest rally in decades to \u201ctake America back\u201d \u2014 clashed with counterprotesters in the streets and a car plowed into crowds, leaving one person dead and 19\u2009others injured.<\/p>\n Hours later, two state police officers died when their helicopter crashed at the outskirts of town. Officials identified them as Berke M.M. Bates of Quinton, Va., who was the pilot, and H. Jay Cullen of Midlothian, Va., who was a passenger. State police said their Bell\u00a0407 helicopter was assisting with the unrest in Charlottesville. Bates died one day before his 41st birthday; Cullen was 48.<\/p>\n Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), who had declared a state of emergency, said at an evening news conference that he had a message for \u201call the white supremacists and the Nazis who came into Charlottesville today: Go home. You are not wanted in this great commonwealth.”<\/p>\n Maurice Jones, Charlottesville\u2019s city manager, looked stricken as he spoke. \u201cHate came to our town today in a way that we had feared but we had never really let ourselves imagine would,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n State and local officials declined to take reporters\u2019 questions.<\/p>\n In an emergency meeting Saturday evening, the Charlottesville City Council voted unanimously to give police the power to enact a curfew or otherwise restrict assembly to protect public safety.<\/p>\n Video recorded at the scene of the car crash shows a 2010 gray Dodge Challenger accelerating into crowds on a pedestrian mall, sending bodies flying \u2014 and then reversing at high speed, hitting yet more people. Witnesses said the street was filled with people opposed to the white nationalists who had come to town bearing Confederate flags and anti-Semitic epithets.<\/p>\n A 32-year-old woman was killed, according to police, who said they were investigating the crash as a criminal homicide.<\/p>\n The driver of the Challenger, James Alex Fields Jr., 20, of Ohio, was arrested and charged with one count of second-degree murder, three counts of malicious wounding, and one count of hit-and-run attended failure to stop with injury, police said. He is being held without bail and is scheduled to be arraigned Monday, Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail Superintendent Martin Kumer said. Three other men were arrested in connection with violence earlier in the day.<\/p>\n The FBI field office in Richmond and the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office in the Western District of Virginia said late Saturday that they have opened a civil rights investigation into the deadly car crash.<\/p>\n \u201cThe violence and deaths in Charlottesville strike at the heart of American law and justice,\u201d U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. \u201cWhen such actions arise from racial bigotry and hatred, they betray our core values and cannot be tolerated.\u201d\u00a0Records show Fields last lived in Maumee, Ohio, about 15 miles southwest of Toledo.<\/p>\n Fields\u2019s father was killed by a drunk driver a few months before the boy\u2019s birth, according to an uncle who spoke on the condition of anonymity. His father left him money that the uncle kept in a trust until Fields reached adulthood.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen he turned 18, he demanded his money, and that was the last I had any contact with him,\u201d the uncle said.<\/p>\n Fields, he said, grew up mostly in Northern Kentucky, where he\u2019d been raised by a single mother who was a paraplegic. The uncle, who saw Fields mostly at family gatherings, described his nephew as \u201cnot really friendly, more subdued.\u201d<\/p>\n Angela Taylor, a spokeswoman for the University of Virginia Medical Center, said 19 others were brought to the hospital in the early afternoon after the car barreled through the pedestrian mall. Five were in critical condition as of Saturday evening. Another 14 people were hurt in street brawls, city officials said.<\/p>\n <\/b>Earlier, police evacuated a downtown park as rallygoers and counterprotesters traded blows and hurled bottles and chemical irritants at one another, putting an end to the noon rally before it officially began.<\/p>\n Despite the decision to quash the rally, clashes continued on side streets and throughout downtown, including the pedestrian mall at Water and Fourth streets where the Challenger slammed into counterprotesters and two other cars in the early afternoon, sending bystanders running and screaming.<\/p>\n \u201cI am heartbroken that a life has been lost here,\u201d Charlottesville Mayor Michael Signer (D) said in a tweet. \u201cI urge all people of good will \u2014 go home.\u201d<\/p>\n Elected leaders in Virginia and elsewhere urged peace, blasting the white supremacist views on display in Charlottesville as ugly<\/p>\n