Heather Heyer's mother wants her daughter's death to be a 'rallying cry for justice'

The mother of Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old woman killed Saturday when she was hit by a car while protesting a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, wants people to remember her daughter as someone who believed in equality and would open her home to friends in need.

A paralegal, Heyer "always had a very strong sense of right and wrong, she always, even as a child, was very caught up in what she believed to be fair," Susan Bro told HuffPost. "Somehow I almost feel that this is what she was born to be, is a focal point for change. I'm proud that what she was doing was peaceful, she wasn't there fighting with people." While no parent wants to lose a child, "I'm proud of her," she said. "I'm proud of what she did."

The man suspected of plowing into the crowd of counter-protesters, 20-year-old James Fields Jr., has been charged with second-degree murder. Fields was photographed at the Unite the Right rally carrying a shield with a white supremacist emblem, and Bro told HuffPost that she is "sorry he believed that hate could fix problems. Hate only brings more hate." Her fear is Heyer's death being "a focus for more hatred," Bro said, and she hopes instead it can be a "rallying cry for justice and equality and fairness and compassion."

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