COLUMBUS – Several hundred people marched through the streets of the northwest Ohio city where the man accused of running down protesters in Virginia had been living, one of several anti-white nationalist demonstrations in the country Monday.
The anti-white supremacists rally in Maumee took place just a few miles from where James Alex Fields Jr. lived the past year. Demonstrations also took place in other cities, including Cincinnati and Durham, N.C.
Fields is in jail in Virginia, where he’s accused of ramming his car into counter-protesters at a white nationalist rally Saturday, killing one person and injuring 19. A judge denied bond for Fields at a court hearing Monday morning.
RELATED: White nationalists say the rally was a landmark in their drive to promote their agenda.
At the march, Chris Thomas of Sylvania says residents need to stand up and say that Fields doesn’t represent their community. She says we need to stand up and say we’re all Americans and that the nation was built on diversity.
Student leaders at dozens of U.S. universities, including The Ohio State University, are decrying the weekend violence in Virginia in a statement that says campuses should be safe for students, not “places of violence, hate and racism.”
The statement signed by the undergraduate student body president at Ohio State University and his counterparts at more than 120 schools in 34 states and Washington, D.C., stretching from California to Florida and New Jersey.
It expresses support for University of Virginia students in Charlottesville, where the white nationalist rally took place on Saturday.
The student leaders’ statement expresses support for “marginalized students” and advocates for what it describes as “peaceful resistance to violence, racism, white supremacy, bigotry and acts of terrorism.”
More information is coming out about Fields’s violent and racist past.
Records from 911 calls show the driver charged with killing a woman at a white nationalist rally was previously accused of beating his mother and threatening her with a knife.
The records the Florence Police Department in Kentucky show the man’s mother had called police in 2011. Records show Fields’ mother, Samantha Bloom, told police he stood behind her wielding a 12-inch knife. Bloom is disabled and uses a wheelchair.
In another incident in 2010, Bloom said that Fields smacked her in the head and locked her in the bathroom after she told him to stop playing video games. Bloom told officers Fields was on medication to control his temper.
A former classmate of the Fields at a school in Union, Ky., says Fields once said he went on a school trip to Germany so he could “get to the Fatherland.”
Keegan McGrath told The Associated Press on Monday that he was roommates with James Alex Fields Jr. on that trip in 2015.
McGrath says he challenged Fields on his beliefs and went home early because he couldn’t handle being in a room with Fields.
He says Fields seemed fairly normal before that.
Fields briefly worked as a security officer in Ohio.
Securitas Security Services USA, Inc. said in a statement on Monday that James Alex Fields Jr. worked for the company for two months starting in May 2016 and again from November to the present.
The company says the state of Ohio issued Fields a security officer license and that the man “performed his duties satisfactorily.”
Securitas says Fields was on previously requested vacation leave when police say he rammed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters on Saturday, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer. The company says Fields’ employment has been terminated.