NKY native James Alex Fields pleads not guilty in Charlottesville attack

Bob Strickley | Cincinnati Enquirer

Boone County native and Ohio resident James Alex Fields pleaded not guilty to federal hate crimes on Thursday in a deadly attack on protesters Aug. 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Fields was charged with 30 hate crimes last week after authorities say he rammed his car through a group of protesters opposing a white nationalist rally taking place last year. Killed in the attack was Heather Heyer, 32, of Charlottesville.

The not guilty plea was filed in U.S. District Court in Charlottesville Thursday. The Associated Press reported Fields wore a gray striped jumpsuit and sat quietly, giving brief answers to the judge's questions. His attorneys made no request for bail.

His indictment states that before leaving for Charlottesville, a relative of Fields texted him asking him to be careful. In reply, Fields said, "We're not the ones who need to be careful," and included a photo of Adolf Hitler, according to the documents.

Fields was already facing first-degree murder charges in Virginia.

Fields, who lives in Maumee, Ohio, grew up in Boone County, where he later purchased the vehicle authorities say was used in the Charlottesville attack.

The attack followed a brawl between white nationalists and counterprotesters that resulted later in charges and a guilty plea from former Mason resident Daniel Borden, 19.

The Dodge Challenger that struck the crowd of counterprotesters at the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville on Aug. 12 was purchased from a Greater Cincinnati car dealership and last registered in Ohio, online records show.

Prosecutors say Fields was the driver of the vehicle and was photographed hours before the attack with a shield bearing the emblem of one of the hate groups taking part in the rally. He has been in custody since then.

While Fields and his mother lived in a Florence condominium, authorities from the Boone County Sheriff's Office and the Florence Police Department responded nine times from November 2010 through February 2013 to the location, according to records.

Former classmates and teachers of Fields at Randall K. Cooper High School previously described Fields' strange behavior to The Enquirer.

Caitlin Wilson, a graduate of Cooper who went to school with Fields, said as early as middle school Fields would draw swastikas and talk about loving Hitler.

“When I saw his mugshot, I wasn’t shocked,” she told The Enquirer in August.

Former Cooper teacher Derek Weimer had told The Enquirer there was a complaint filed by a teacher regarding an assignment Fields turned in that was "very much along the party lines of the neo-Nazi movement."

The Associated Press contributed.

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