“I couldn’t see too much, but I just felt [blood] dripping and it’s warm on my face,” one victim testified. As a photo of blood streaming down her battered face was shown in the courtroom and memories of the worst day of her life came rushing back, Natalie Romero choked up and her voice cracked. Through tears, she described the moments before the image was taken, when a Dodge Challenger driven by a neo-Nazi plowed into a crowd of anti-racist demonstrators in 2017, killing one woman and injuring dozens of other people. “I get hit and the next thing I know is just darkness and hearing a long beep and thumps,” Romero, 24, testified. She described it like a scene from a war movie when a soldier is blown up by an explosion and the screen flashes before going dark. “I couldn’t see too much, but I just felt [blood] dripping and it’s warm on my face,” she said. “I thought I was about to die.” The attack recounted by Romero took place on Aug. 12, 2017. It was the deadly crescendo to a weekend of violence sparked by a rally of hundreds of neo-Nazis and other white supremacists angry over the planned removal of a Robert E. Lee monument. The car assault left Romero hospitalized with a fractured skull, a dead tooth, various cuts and bruises, and eventually acute anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. She is one of nine survivors of the attack and violent events that preceded it who are suing the 24 organizers of the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville on Aug. 11 and 12, 2017. Her testimony on Friday was the first of many expected in the landmark civil trial that will determine whether the group of far-right extremists conspired to commit racially motivated violence when they planned their rally and whether they should pay damages to the survivors. Romero and the other plaintiffs filed the case in the months after the violence with the help of Integrity First for America, a civil rights nonprofit. Fighting for them in court is a high-powered, pro bono legal team. On the other side are the white supremacists and their attorneys, who admitted in opening statements to either being or defending people with First Amendment–protected abhorrent views who blame the violence on the Charlottesville police’s incompetence and counterprotesters who confronted them. They also deny any conspiracy existed.
via buzzfeednews: Survivors Of “Unite The Right” Violence Testified About How The Attack Unfolded: “I Thought I Was About To Die”