Two people who say they suffered “serious injuries” during the weekend’s bloodshed in Charlottesville, Virginia, filed the first lawsuit over the violence on Tuesday.
In a criminal complaint, siblings Micah and Tadrint Washington say they were on their way home when murder suspect James Alex Fields Jr. deliberately crashed into their 2005 Toyota Camry and plowed through a group of protesters opposing Saturday’s white supremacist rally.
According to the complaint, the impact of the crash propelled multiple people onto the Washingtons’ car. Both plaintiffs say they hit the windshield and sustained head injuries. They are now demanding $3 million in damages for assault, battery, civil conspiracy and negligence, among other things.
In addition to Fields, the lawsuit names “Unite The Right” rally organizer Jason Kessler and several other white supremacist individuals and groups ― including white nationalist leader Richard Spencer, former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke and The Daily Stormer, a white supremacist website.
Fields, 20, is accused of killing 32-year-old paralegal Heather Heyer and injuring at least 19 others. He’s being held at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail on charges of second-degree murder and will next appear in court on Aug. 25.
The lawsuit describes Fields as a “racist, violent and hateful person who sought to kill innocent people, including plaintiffs, in order to further a message of hate, intolerance and to instill terror in and intimidate all those who oppose the Alt-right’s vision of a racist intolerant society.”
The Washingtons did not immediately reply to HuffPost’s request for comment about their lawsuit.
Kessler and other defendants have remained defiant. In a statement on Sunday, Kessler blamed the violence in Charlottesville on law enforcement officers who “failed to maintain law and order by protecting the First Amendment rights of the participants of the ‘Unite the Right’ rally.”
He also blamed the media for “not showing who instigated the violence.”
Read the full lawsuit below.
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