The Walk from Justice Park Southward on Fourth Street

For a while before 1:40 p.m. on August 12, 2017, James Fields was idling his car just north of the intersection of Fourth Street and Market Street in Charlottesville, Virginia. One block behind Fields, as he sat in his idling car at that intersection, was Justice Park, where a large group of anti-racism counter-protesters had established a base in accordance with a city permit. Within this base, so-called "medic tents" had been erected.

From south to north, the west-east streets are
Water, Main, Market and Jefferson

At about 1:40, Fields drove southward into a crowd of counter-protesters who were starting to walk northward from Water Street.

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The Independent Review of the 2017 Protest Events in Charlottesville, Virginia, reports that about 100 counter-protesters began to walk from Justice Park southward at 1:20 p.m.

VSP [Virginia State Police] helicopter footage shows a group of more than 100 counter-protesters leaving Justice Park around 1:20 p.m., walking south on 4th Street. As they passed through the intersection at Market Street, there was no officer present and they passed the small plastic sawhorse that stood to prevent southbound traffic.

They crossed the Downtown Mall and Water Street, went under the railroad tracks, then arrived at Garrett Street. Dan Haig, who was with the group from Justice Park, told us that when they arrived someone from the community ran out to tell them that the everything was safe and they should stop shouting.

The group stopped for a moment to regroup. At 1:30 p.m., the group continued west down Garrett Street, then turned right on 2nd Street SE and moved back towards Water Street.

[Page 142]

The 100 counter-protesters who departed from Justice Park at 1:20
were walking west on Garrett Street at 1:30

The 100 counter-protesters walked southward through the intersection of Fourth and Market at 1:23. By that time, a police sawhorse had been removed from the intersection's south side.

The intersection of Fourth and Market at 1:23 p.m.

The 100 counter-protesters walked from Justice Park southward to Garrett Street because they thought mistakenly that some militia members had gone to the vicinity of Friendship Court Apartments (see the bottom of this post's second map) to harass the residents, who were predominantly African-Americans. Because no such harassment was happening, the 100 counter-protesters walked north on 2nd Street, back toward the town's center. (Independent Review, pages 140-142)

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At about 1:35:30, a maroon minivan drove south from the intersection of Fourth and Market. It reached the intersection of Fourth and Water at about 1:36:00 and stopped there for five minutes.

At about 1:38:45, a black truck drove south from the intersection of Fourth and Market. It reached the intersection of Fourth and Water at about 1:39:15 and stopped alongside the maroon van.

(For the above times, see my previous article titled James Fields' Backward Movement Before He Drove into the Crowd.

I speculate that those two cars were related to the group of 100 counter-protesters that had walked from Justice Park to Friendship Court Apartments. Justice Park had some so-called "medic tents" (Independent Review, page 77), and perhaps those two vehicles were serving as make-shift ambulances and so were positioning themselves to help people who might be injured in future fights.

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It seems that the counter-protesters turned from Water Street northward onto Fourth Street because many of them intended to return to Justice Park, which they considered to be their base for the day.

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The actions of James Fields might be related to the counter-protesters' walk southward on Fourth Street. Their walk might have attracted his attention to Fourth Street. Perhaps some stragglers from Justice Park saw his backing-up and idling on Fourth Street, or perhaps some such stragglers even attacked him.