Heather Heyer came to downtown Charlottesville with her friends to make a stand against white nationalists who converged on the Virginia college town to demand the city keep a statue honoring a Confederate war hero, her boss said on Sunday.
The 32-year-old paralegal wanted to send a clear message to the neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan sympathizers who planned to stage one of the largest far-right rallies in recent U.S. history that people abhor their views in the city where she was born, he said.
But her decision to join counterprotesters on Saturday resulted in tragedy when a 20-year-old Ohio man drove his car at high speed into a line of marchers, killing Heyer and injuring at least 19 others.