Charlottesville Victim Identified: Mother Says “She Died Doing What Was Right”

The 32-year-old woman mowed down by a car during yesterday’s counter-protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, has been identified as Heather D. Heyer, a Charlottesville resident.

In a statement released by Charlottesville City Hall, Heyer’s death was called “a senseless act of violence” that “rips a hole in our collective hearts.” The statement says Heyer “was struck down by a vehicle while exercising her peaceful first-amendment right to speech.”

A Go Fund Me page, reportedly set up by Heyer’s friends to assist her family, had raised about $124,000 within its first 14 hours. The page states:

Heather Heyer was murdered while protesting against hate. We are raising money to give to her family for anything that they may need. The family is aware of this and is in complete charge of when and where the funds will be released. She is a Greene County native and Graduated from William Monroe High School. Her mother (whom I will not name until she is ready) said “She died doing what was right. My heart is broken, but I am forever proud of her.”

She will truly be missed.

Heyer was one of three people whose deaths are being attributed by local police as related to yesterday’s “Unite the Right” rally of white supremacists, white nationalists and neo-Nazis. Virginia state troopers H. Jay Cullen and Berke M.M. Bates died in a helicopter crash while monitoring the scene.

According to the City Hall statement, Cullen and Bates “were working with the Charlottesville Police and their brothers and sisters in the Virginia State Police to help ensure the safety of many city residents and visitors who were in Charlottesville yesterday.”

“These men gave their lives in the line of duty and our gratitude to them cannot be overstated,” the statement continued.

Read the entire statement here: