Charlottesville Mayor To Make Confederate Statue Announcement

(Updated 11:05 a.m. Friday) CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA — Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer will make an announcement on Friday about the city's Robert E. Lee statue, victim Heather Heyer who was killed in the violence between counter-protesters and white supremacists and safety at future public events.

The announcement will come less than a week after white nationalists clashed with counter-protesters in Charlottesville. White nationalists had a permit to protest the city's decision to remove the Lee statue, but authorities declared an unlawful assembly before it was set to start.

Signer originally planned to hold a press conference about the announcement but cancelled it Monday. Instead, the city will release a statement in the afternoon.

According to NBC29 in Charlottesville, Signer initially voted against removing the statue. Sources tell the news station he wants to change his vote to "remove."

Three people were killed in events relating to the violence. Heyer, a counter-protester, was killed when a driver reported to have Nazi sympathies mowed down dozens of people in the street. Nineteen others were injured in that attack. Hours later, Virginia State troopers Lt. H. Jay Cullen and Trooper-Pilot Berke M.M. Bates were killed in a helicopter crash while monitoring the violent clashes.

White supremacists have held other rallies in response to the city's decision to remove the statue from a city park: one in May and a Ku Klux Klan demonstration in July. The Charlottesville City Council voted in April to sell the Lee statue, but a judge's injunction issued in May has stopped the removal for six months. A court hearing on the matter will take place Aug. 30, according to NBC29. In June, the city council renamed Lee Park as Emancipation Park.

Other places across the country have started petitions or taken steps to remove statues after the violence in Charlottesville. In Baltimore, the city took down Confederate statues overnight Wednesday, while a crowd toppled a Confederate statue in North Carolina. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan ordered the removal of an Annapolis statue portraying the judge that upheld slavery in Dred Scott, and Birmingham, Alabama, Mayor William Bell ordered a statue to be covered. Others have started petitions, from Georgia, to Houston to Seattle.

Photo of Robert E. Lee statue by Billy Hathorn/Wikimedia Commons