On Monday, Susan Bro, the mother of Heather Heyer, confronted James Alex Fields Jr. for the first time. Fields, the 21-year-old neo-Nazi who killed Heyer at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year when he drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, was convicted of first-degree murder, five counts of aggravated malicious wounding, three counts of malicious wounding, and one count of a hit-and-run.
He faces up to life in prison.
In the victim statement she read at his sentencing hearing, Bro said:
"I can't concentrate. I can't read books. Some days I can't do anything but cry or sit and stare… Her death was like an explosion in the world,” in reference to her daughter.
Bro shared how close her family was, and how deeply Heyer’s sudden death impacted them:
"My family has been to therapy as the darkness has tried to swallow us whole," she said. "We are survivors, but we're much sadder survivors. Therapy only helps a little bit. My granddaughter used to Snapchat with Heather. Now she barely remembers her."
To review how this all began, Fields originally drove from Ohio to Charlottesville on August 12, 2017, in order to attend the rally. The rally initially started under the premise of protesting the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee in the city. Literally hundreds of white supremacists took to the University of Virginia to march. Many carried tiki torches.
And Fields wasn’t there by happenstance. As text messages between him and his mother, Samantha Bloom, show, Fields wasn’t trying to avoid the rally, or worried about his own safety. Bloom sent a text warning her son to be careful when she found out he was traveling to the rally. He replied: “We’re not the one[s] who need to be careful.” Even more telling? He sent a meme of Hitler attached to his text.
Later, in calls Fields made to his mother from jail, he expressed a similar lack of interest in those impacted by his violence. For example, in a December 2017 call, he referred to Bro as "one of those anti-white communists," and said, "It doesn't fucking matter [that she lost her daughter]. She's a communist.” In another phone call to his mother, he referred to his victim as, “that one girl who died, or whatever.”
In her statement, Bro said of her daughter’s death:
”Heather was full of love, full of justice, and full of fairness. Mr. Fields tried to silence her, but I refuse to allow that. I'm the type of mom where if you mess with my kid on the playground, it's on. I stood up in her place. I talk to everyone who will listen about her and about hate."
“I don’t hate Mr. Fields,” Bro said. “I’m leaving him in the hands of justice.”