After claiming self-defense, a Klansman pleads no contest to firing gun at Unite the Right
鈥婣 Maryland Ku Klux Klan leader who fired a gun during the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, has pleaded no contest to the charge.
A judge in Charlottesville Circuit Court on Wednesday set an August聽21 sentencing for 53-year-old Richard Wilson Preston. The聽plea entered Tuesday means Preston acknowledged that enough evidence existed to convict him, but he doesn鈥檛 admit to committing a crime.
Preston stood accused of firing a shot that didn鈥檛 hit anyone during the聽rally.聽He fired the shot聽within 1,000 feet of a school, a felony in Virginia that could carry a sentence of up to ten years. Preston has said he was protecting people against someone with a flame thrower and planned to claim self-defense if the case went to trial.
Preston, a Baltimore, Maryland resident, is the聽Imperial Wizard of the Confederate White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
On a video filmed by the ACLU of Virginia, Preston is seen firing a pistol at聽counterprotesters.
In the video, Preston is seen drawing his pistol and聽shouting, 鈥淗ey, n-----,鈥� then walking toward the crowd, lowering his gun toward the ground and firing before walking away. There were聽no reports of injuries聽from the gunshot.
Charlottesville鈥檚 top prosecutor, Joseph D. Platania, told a judge that a witness saw Preston point his gun toward the ground beside 24-year-old Corey A. Long at a 45-degree angle and then heard a gunshot.
The witness, Platania told the court, would have testified at trial that the flames from Long鈥檚 aerosol can were not close to anyone, .
Platania also said prosecutors did not believe anything about the incident would 鈥渏ustify the discharge of a firearm in self-defense.鈥�
Long was wielding an aerosol can shooting out large flames when Preston fired at him. Long faces charges, including misdemeanor assault and disorderly conduct. He is scheduled for a June court hearing.
Preston鈥檚 plea is the latest in a string of court cases stemming from the August 2017 rally.
The racist gathering 鈥� the day after a fiery-torch, Ku Klux Klan-style march through the University of Virginia campus 鈥� turned deadly when another racist demonstrator drove his car into a crowd of counter-demonstrators, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer.
Jacob Scott Goodwin, a 23-year-old white supremacist who wore pins celebrating Adolf Hitler and the neo-Nazi Traditionalist Worker聽Party during the rally, was found guilty earlier this month of assaulting a black man.
Goodwin, of Ward, Arkansas, was convicted by a jury in Charlottesville of 鈥渕alicious wounding,鈥� a felony related to the August 12 attack that severely injured DeAndre Harris. Later the same week, 34-year-old Alex Michael Ramos was also found guilty of felony malicious wounding for his role in the garage beating.
础苍诲听James Alex Fields Jr., a young neo-Nazi, faces first-degree murder charges after being accused of intentionally ramming his car into a crowd at the rally, killing Heyer.
