An Ohio man is being held on charges related to the fatal car crash in Charlottesville, Va., in the wake of a white supremacist rally.
A Michigan man was falsely accused by conservative and alt-right websites as being the driver of Saturday’s deadly car attack on anti-racist protesters in central Virginia, in the hours after the tragedy.
The man, who the Detroit Free Press is not naming because his family reported online they have received threats, wrote on Facebook that he drives a 2009 Chevy Impala, not the vehicle involved in the fatal attack in Charlottesville, Va.
“im not the one, ” he wrote on Facebook, adding he was from Michigan. His Facebook page says he lives in Detroit.
More: Maumee, Ohio: Accused Charlottesville driver James Alex Fields Jr. doesn’t represent us
Reached on Facebook by the Free Press, the man was asked via message about how the events linking him to Charlottesville unfolded.
“we’ll be in touch, ” he wrote back. But the man did not immediately contact the Free Press again by late Sunday afternoon.
Instead, it was an Maumee, Ohio, man who is being held on charges related to the fatal car crash that also left 19 injured in Charlottesville, Va., in the wake of a white supremacist rally, authorities said.
James Fields Jr ., 20, was being held at the Albermarle-Charlottesville County Regional Jail on suspicion of second-degree murder, malicious wounding and failure to stop in an accident that resulted in death.
Authorities said Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old Charlottesville legal assistant, died. Nineteen others were injured in the incident.
The Dodge Challenger that struck the crowd of counter-protesters at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville was purchased from a Greater Cincinnati car dealership and last registered in Ohio, online records show.
More: The story of Charlottesville told in debris
The Ohio license plate number seen in photographs taken by The Daily Progress of Charlottesville tracks to a vehicle identification number of a 2010 Dodge Challenger last registered in Maumee, Ohio. Documents show Fields has a residence in Maumee.
A Carfax report shows the vehicle was purchased by its latest owner in June 2015 from Kerry Toyota in Florence, Ky. The title for the vehicle was updated the next month in Maumee.
The vehicle was not listed as stolen by the National insurance Crime Bureau as of Saturday afternoon. The Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles also lists the vehicle as registered out of Lucas County, where Maumee is located.
The website GotNews.com posted a story that “using internet sleuthing, ” it reposted “evidence” about the Michigan man. But later, the site updated the post that “GotNews has retracted the article. GotNews regrets the error and apologizes” to the man and his family.
Another site, the Gateway Pundit, reprinted a tweet that named the Michigan man as the suspected driver.
“This is just a report….. But look at the tweet below, ” Gateway’s Jim Hoft wrote at 4: 21 p.m. Saturday, naming the Michigan man in the headline.
But now that post has been removed from the Gateway website. The Free Press found a cached version of the posting online.
“It was a bad story. We took it down in 5 minutes, ” Hoft emailed the Free Press on Sunday.
One Twitter user, who described himself as a “Libertarian family man for closed borders and free market, ” tweeted out: “Uh oh. Looks like car terrorist today may have been a lefty who thought he was mowing down racists.” The tweet was later removed.
Videos of the incident show a gray Dodge Challenger muscle car barreling into pedestrians at high speed and slamming into the back of a second vehicle. With the car’s front badly damaged and its mangled bumper sticking out one side, the driver backs up a high speed for several blocks, then turns left and speeds off, chased by police.
The violence prompted Gov. Terry McAuliffe to declare a state of emergency before the crash and played out against a backdrop of unofficial, armed militia groups ringing Emancipation Park, where the controversial rally was called to protest the planned removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
USA TODAY, The Cincinnati Enquirer and The (Staunton, Va.) News Leader contributed to this report.
Contact Matthew Dolan: 313-223-4743 or msdolan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @matthewsdolan.
