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A4 U.S. NEWS
Saturday 19 auguSt 2017

Charlottesville mayor calls for swift removal of Lee statue

lawmakers to confirm the what is believed to be the cided in court.
city’s right to remove a stat- largest gathering of white “The governor hopes the
ue of Confederate Gen. supremacists in a decade. court will rule in the city’s
Robert E. Lee, a request “We can, and we must, re- favor soon and encour-
that was swiftly rejected by spond by denying the Na- ages Mayor Signer to focus
the state’s governor. zis and the KKK and the so- on that important litigation
Mayor Mike Signer said called alt-right the twisted rather than a redundant
recent clashes over race totem they seek,” Signer emergency session,” Coy
and the Confederacy had said in a statement. said.
turned “equestrian statues Charlottesville’s plans to re- McAuliffe did sign an ex-
into lightning rods” and move the statue are in the ecutive order Friday after-
urged Democratic Gov. midst of a legal challenge. noon temporarily banning
Terry McAuliffe to convene A law passed in 1998 for- any public demonstrations
a special session of the bids local governments at a monument in Rich-
General Assembly. from removing or damag- mond. Unlike the Charlot-
A sign saying Hether Heyer Park is placed at the base of the Signer’s statement came ing war monuments, but tesville statue that sits in a
statue of Confederate Army of Northern Virginia Gen. Robert E. nearly a week after white there remains legal ambi- city park, the Richmond
Lee stands in Emancipation Park in Charlottesville, Va., Friday, supremacists descended guity about whether that monument to Lee is in the
Aug. 18, 2017. Heyer was killed while protesting a white nation- on the city and violently applies to statues erected middle of a traffic circle
alist rally in Charlottesville Saturday August 12.
(AP Photo/Cliff Owen) clashed with counter pro- before the law was passed. on Monument Avenue,
testers. One woman was McAuliffe spokesman Bri- an iconic boulevard with
By ALAN SUDERMAN mayor of Charlottesville on killed Saturday when a car an Coy said the governor heavy traffic.
Associated Press Friday called for an emer- plowed into a crowd of won’t call a special session Also Friday, the mother of
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — The gency meeting of state people there to condemn while the issue is being de- a woman who was killed
while protesting the rally
said that she won’t talk to
President Donald Trump
because of comments he
made after her daughter’s
death.
Speaking on ABC’s “Good
Morning America,” Susan
Bro said she initially missed
the first few calls to her
from the White House. But
she said “now I will not”
talk to the president after a
news conference in which
Trump equated violence
by white supremacists at
the rally with violence by
those protesting the rally.
Bro’s daughter, 32-year-old
Heather Heyer, was killed
and 19 others were injured
when the driver rammed
a car into a crowd of
demonstrators. An Ohio
man, James Alex Fields
Jr., has been arrested and
charged with murder and
other offenses. Charlot-
tesville Police announced
five more felony charges
— two counts of mali-
cious wounding and three
counts of aggravated ma-
licious wounding — against
Fields Friday afternoon.q