click to enlarge - Screenshot
- Ryan Roy at the Charlottesville rally
An Enosburg Falls man who attended the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., has been charged with a felony for marching with a torch during a demonstration with other white nationalists.
Ryan Roy, 34, faces one count of burning an object with the intent to intimidate. He's at least the fourth person indicted for participating in the August 11, 2017, rally on the University of Virginia campus. Marchers carried lit torches and chanted things such as "Jews will not replace us!" and the Nazi slogan "Blood and soil!"
The day after the rally, a man drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters in downtown Charlottesville, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer.
Roy, who grew up in Essex, did not respond to requests for comment this week. But in 2017, he was outed as a rally attendee after locals spotted him in an award-winning Vice News
documentary about the event. In an interview with
Seven Days shortly afterward, he admitted that he'd attended and said the large crowd proved "
that we’re a legitimate movement, that this is a movement of people. It’s not like a fringe thing."
“My views are right. I don’t feel like I need to hide it,” he said at the time. “I’m not oppressing anyone. I’m not hurting anyone. I’m not breaking any laws. I feel the way I feel.”
Virginia adopted the charge of "burning an object with the intent to intimidate" in 2002, "partly in response to the Ku Klux Klan, which was known for burning crosses in public to scare the Black population," the Washington Post reported. If convicted, Roy faces up to five years in prison.
The prosecutor who was in office during the 2017 rally declined to prosecute the marchers. But his successor, Albemarle County Commonwealth's Attorney James Hingeley, vowed to bring charges if elected, according to CNN. He took office in January 2020.
Hingeley's office did not respond to a request for comment about the indictments.
According to online court records, a grand jury indicted Roy in early April. He was arrested shortly after and released on bond. The indictment was unsealed on May 9, and Roy's next court hearing is scheduled for June 5.