A Walkertown lawyer obtained an arrest warrant last week against a black man who was beaten after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., two months ago.
Harold Ray Crews, 48, obtained the warrant on Oct. 9 from a city magistrate in Charlottesville. The warrant charges DeAndre Harris, 20, of Suffolk, Va. with felony unlawful wounding.
Crews, who is white, accused Harris of striking him with a blunt weapon on the left side of Harris’ face on Aug. 12 on Market Street, according to the warrant. Crews indicated that neither he nor any of his companions had provoked Harris.
“As a result of this attack, I have been permanently scarred,” Crews told the magistrate.
Harris turned himself in to the Charlottesville Police Department on Oct. 12. He was released on an unsecured bond.
Crews declined to speak with a Winston-Salem Journal reporter about the case last Saturday, telling the reporter “to go away.” Crews is the chairman of the League of the South’s North Carolina chapter. His law office is on Old Hollow Road in Walkertown.
Crews, members of the League of the South and other neo-Confederate groups, neo-Nazis, the Klu Klux Klan and white nationalists gathered in Charlottesville on Aug. 12 to rally against that city’s decision to remove a statute of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a downtown park. Counter-protesters gathered to oppose the white nationalists’ rally. Both sides fought each other.
Heather Heyer, 32, a counter protester, was killed when a car plowed through a crowd; 19 others were injured. James Alex Fields, 20, of Maumee, Ohio, a Nazi sympathizer, has been charged with first-degree murder and other offenses in Heyer’s death.
Brad Griffin, a spokesman for the League of the South, said that Crews doesn’t like talking to news reporters. Griffin said he has a video that shows Harris and other men attacking Crews in Charlottesville.
The incident started after authorities in the city canceled the Unite the Right rally at the downtown park where the Lee statue stands, Griffin said. As those protesters were walking to their cars in a parking garage, Harris, his friends and members of Antifa followed them, Griffin alleges.
Antifa, which is short for anti-fascists, is a broad group of people whose political beliefs lean toward the left — often the far left — but do not conform with the Democratic Party platform. Members of Antifa fought with the white nationalists in Charlottesville.
At some point, a man with Harris’ group grabbed the Confederate battle flag that Crews was carrying and spun Crews around, Griffin contends. Moments later, a man struck Crews on the left side of his face with a flashlight, causing a wound, Griffin said. During the attack, another man struck Crews in the back of his head, Griffin said.
Those actions started a “huge brawl,” Griffin said, between the protesters and the counter-protesters and led to Harris being assaulted by a group of men. Photos and video that were widely shared online showed Harris being beaten by a group of men inside a parking garage. In addition to Harris, three men have been charged in the attack.
Harris suffered a spinal injury and a head laceration, according to media reports.
Harris’ attorney has said that Harris did nothing wrong and that authorities don’t have probable cause to charge him.
S. Lee Merritt of Philadelphia, Harris’ attorney, issued a statement last week, saying that Crews has led a campaign to “manipulate the Charlottesville judiciary and further victimize Harris” by providing incomplete video evidence that led to a warrant being issued for Harris.
“Mr. Crews was not injured in any way by DeAndre Harris,” the statement reads.
Griffin said that Merritt’s statement about Harris’ innocence is false. Griffin said he thinks that Crews has mostly recovered from the attack.
The Southern Poverty Law Center of Montgomery, Ala, a nonprofit legal advocacy organization specializing in civil rights and public interest litigation, has classified the League of the South as a hate group.
Griffin said that his organization considers the Southern Poverty Law Center a hate group.
“They hate white people,” Griffin said of the SPLC. “It’s not a credible source.”