Heather Heyer’s Mother Speaks Out After Daughter Killed by Terrorist at White Supremacist Rally in Charlottesville

ByElizabeth Licata

The parents of 32-year-old Heather Heyer are devastated after their daughter was murdered by a terrorist at the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., this weekend. She was standing with a crowd of anti-racist counter-protesters when one of the neo-Nazis drove a car into the crowd. He injured 20 people in the attack, and Heyer died.

Heather Heyer’s mother told the Huffington Post that her daughter believed passionately in social justice and equality, and she was willing to fight for it.

“She always had a very strong sense of right and wrong, she always, even as a child, was very caught up in what she believed to be fair,” Heyer’s mother said.

”For her, it wasn’t just lip service,” Heyer’s father said.

Heyer’s last public Facebook post said, “If you aren’t outraged, you aren’t paying attention.”

Her friend Marissa Blair, who was standing with her in Charlottesville the car crashed into the crowd, said Heyer believed in getting “out into the community and doing things.” Her friends say her activism didn’t end at the computer screen.

In fact, Blair says this has lit a fire under her to “go harder” against the neo-Nazis who killed her fried, because she thinks that’s what Heyer would have done.

”I’ve never had a close friend like this be murdered,” Blair told the New York Times. ”We thought, ”˜What would Heather do?’ Heather would go harder. So that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to preach love. We’re going to preach equality, and Heather’s death won’t be in vain.”

Heyer’s mother cried when she told reporters that she wanted her daughter’s death to be “a rallying cry for justice and equality and fairness and compassion.” That’s what Heyer believed in, and that’s what she was standing up for when she was murdered.

”No mother wants to lose a child, but I’m proud of her,” she said through tears. ”I’m proud of what she did.”

James Alex Fields Jr. charged in Heather Heyer’s murder.

The man charged with killing Heather Heyer is 20-year-old James Alex Fields Jr., who traveled from Ohio to Charlottesville for the white nationalist rally. His mother says she had no idea her son was a neo-Nazi. She said she thought he was going to “a Trump rally.”

Fields’ mother says she tried to stay out of his politics. She told reporters she didn’t think her son could be a white supremacist, because he had a black friend.

His teachers, however, seem to have all known.

“It was quite clear he had some really extreme views and maybe a little bit of anger behind them,” Fields’ high school social studies teacher told CNN. “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.”

Fields’ teachers told the New York Times that he wrote a paper as a high school freshman that was “very much along the party lines of the neo-Nazi movement.”

If you can’t shut up about being a Nazi in high school, how could your mom not know? This had been going on for years. You can’t stay out of your kid’s politics when he’s writing neo-Nazi papers as a freshman in high school.

Fields joined the Army after high school, but left after just a few months. An Army spokesperson told CNN that he hadn’t met training standards.

Police arrested Fields and charged him with second-degree murder, malicious wounding, and a hit-and-run.

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(Image: GoFundMe / HeatherHeyer)

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