Before Charlottesville, a String of Killings Raised the Specter of Far-Right Violence

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/us/charlottesville-nazi-kkk-attacks.html

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The death of Heather D. Heyer, who was killed on Saturday after a man drove a car into counterprotesters at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., was the latest in a string of fatal attacks that have raised the specter of far-right, racist or anti-immigrant violence.

The police said James Alex Fields Jr., 20, of Ohio was driving the car and charged him with second-degree murder and related crimes. The Department of Justice was opening a civil rights investigation into Ms. Heyer’s death; Attorney General Jeff Sessions called it an act of terrorism.

During the rally, Mr. Fields was photographed marching with Vanguard America, which the Anti-Defamation League describes as a white supremacist group that uses Nazi rhetoric. One of his former teachers, Derek Weimer, told The Cincinnati Enquirer that Mr. Fields once wrote a paper “very much along the party lines of the neo-Nazi movement.”

Here is a list of recent killings that law enforcement officials have linked to suspects with a history of racist and anti-immigrant views or affiliation with white supremacist groups.

Srinivas Kuchibhotla and Alok Madasani, two tech engineers from India, liked to go to a bar in Olathe, Kan., after work. One evening there in February, they encountered Adam W. Purinton, a 51-year-old white man, who questioned their immigration status and hurled racial slurs at them.

“He asked us what visa are we currently on and whether we are staying here illegally,” Mr. Madasani told The New York Times.

Mr. Purinton was kicked out of the bar but came back a short time later, angry and armed. He shot both men and then shot another man, Ian Grillot, who tried to catch him. Mr. Kuchibhotla was killed.

Mr. Purinton fled to Missouri, where he was arrested after telling a bartender he was on the run, the police said. He faces state charges of premeditated first-degree murder in Kansas and was indicted on federal hate crimes charges in June.

James Harris Jackson, a white man, traveled from Baltimore to New York City in March with the goal of killing black men, investigators said. Soon after he arrived, he fatally stabbed one, Timothy Caughman, 66, with a sword in Midtown Manhattan.

Mr. Jackson turned himself in to the police the day after the attack and told them where he disposed of the sword. He told investigators he wanted to kill black men in New York specifically because he would get more media attention there.

“We’re very fortunate that it stopped at one, and it wasn’t more,” Assistant Chief William Aubry, the commander of Manhattan South detectives, told reporters at the time.

Jeremy Joseph Christian flew into a rage when he saw a young woman in a hijab on a commuter train in Portland, Ore., and began yelling anti-Muslim insults at her and her friend. When other passengers intervened, he pulled out a knife and slashed their throats.

Two people, Ricky John Best and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai Meche, were killed, and a third, Micah David-Cole Fletcher, was seriously wounded. Mr. Christian was charged with two counts of aggravated murder but defended the killings in a courtroom rant.

“Death to the enemies of America. Leave this country if you hate our freedom,” he said. “You call it terrorism, I call it patriotism.”

One of the women Mr. Christian yelled at on the train, Destinee Mangum, 16, thanked the stabbing victims for saving her life. She told reporters she is not Muslim.

Devon Arthurs, 18, a former neo-Nazi who converted to Islam, took three people hostage inside a head shop in Tampa, Fla., in May. He told the hostages he was angry about American bombings in the Muslim world and said he had killed someone.

The police convinced Mr. Arthurs to release the hostages and arrested him. He told them he had killed two of his roommates, Jeremy Himmelman, 22, and Andrew Oneschuk, 18, because they did not respect his religious beliefs. He said they were neo-Nazis, which their families denied.

The police also arrested a fourth roommate, Brandon Russell, 21, after they found a stockpile of bomb-making material in his bedroom and a picture of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, on his dresser.

Mr. Arthurs was charged with two counts of murder. Mr. Russell was charged with two counts related to the explosive material.

Richard W. Collins III, 23, had just been commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army and was three days from graduating from Bowie State University in Maryland when he was stabbed and killed by Sean C. Urbanski, 22, a student at the University of Maryland. Mr. Collins was black and Mr. Urbanski is white.

David B. Mitchell, the police chief at the University of Maryland, said Mr. Urbanski belonged to a Facebook group called “Alt-Reich: Nation” whose content contained “extreme bias against women, Latinos, members of the Jewish faith, and especially African-Americans.”

But Prince George’s County State’s Attorney, Angela D. Alsobrooks, said prosecutors would “need something probably more than just a Facebook posting” to pursue a hate crimes charge.

“We do not have enough evidence to say conclusively whether this is a hate crime,” she said in May. “What we can say is that we will leave no stone unturned.”