VA Trooper-Pilot Berke M.M. Bates (L), and Lt. H. Jay Cullen (R), who were killed when the helicopter they were piloting crashed. ─ AP
Just as the city seemed like to be quieting down, black smoke billowed out from the tree tops just outside of town as a Virginia State Police helicopter crashed into the woods.
Robby E. Noll, who lives in the county just outside Charlottesville, heard the helicopter sputtering.
"I turned my head to the sky. You could tell he was struggling to try to get control of it," he said.
He said pieces of the helicopter started to break off as it fell from the sky.
Both troopers onboard, Lieutenant H. Jay Cullen, 48, and Berke M.M. Bates, one day shy of his 41st birthday, were killed.
Police said the helicopter had been deployed to the violent protests in the city, which has been caught in the middle of the nation's culture wars since it decided earlier this year to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, enshrined in bronze on horseback in the city's Emancipation Park.
'Trump must call evil by its name' Fields' arrest capped off hours of unrest.
Hundreds of people threw punches, hurled water bottles and unleashed chemical sprays.
Some came prepared for a fight, with body armor and helmets.
Videos that ricocheted around the world on social media showed people beating each other with sticks and shields.
Trump criticised the violence in a tweet on Saturday, followed by a press conference and a call for "a swift restoration of law and order."
Trump in his comments contended that the "hatred and bigotry" broadcast across the country had taken root long before his political ascendancy.
"We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides," he said.
Trump's comments are drawing criticism from Republicans as well as Democrats, who say that he should be denouncing hate groups by name.
The "on many sides" ending of his statement drew the ire of his critics, who said that he failed to specifically denounce white supremacy and equated those who came to protest racism with the white supremacists.
Some of the white supremacists at Saturday's rally cited US President Donald Trump's victory after a campaign of racially-charged rhetoric as validation for their beliefs.
A neo-Nazi website is praising the president for not condemning white supremacist groups for the demonstration that turned violent.
The Daily Stormer ─ which describes itself as "the world's most genocidal Republican website" ─ says that Trump's comments are "good" and amount to "no condemnation at all".
Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe and Charlottesville Mayor Michael Signer, both Democrats, lumped the blame squarely on the rancour that has seeped into American politics and the white supremacists who came from out of town into their city, nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, home to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's plantation.
Signer said that he blamed Trump for inflaming racial prejudices with his campaign last year.
"There is a very sad and regrettable coarseness in our politics that we've all seen too much of today," Signer said at a press conference.
"Our opponents have become our enemies, debate has become intimidation."
Signer said the white supremacist groups who came into his city to spread hate "are on the losing side of history."
"Tomorrow will come and we will emerge," he said, "I can promise you, stronger than ever."
Senator Cory Gardner, a Colorado Republican, says that the president "must call evil by its name".
Four-hundred miles away, the mayor of Lexington, Kentucky, hinted that the white supremacists might get the opposite of what they'd hoped for.
Lexington Mayor Jim Gray announced on Twitter that he would work to remove the confederate monument at his county's courthouse.
"Today's events in Virginia remind us that we must bring our country together by condemning violence, white supremacists and Nazi hate groups," he wrote. "We cannot let them define our future."
The Reverend Jesse Jackson noted that Trump for years questioned President Barack Obama's citizenship and his legitimacy as the first black president, and has fanned the flames of white resentment.
"We are in a very dangerous place right now," Jackson said.