Texan who participated in torch-waving crowd in 2017 at UVa sentenced

Colton Gene Fears, a 35-year-old Pasadena, Texas resident, was sentenced Friday to five years in prison. But that sentence was significantly reduced by Presiding Judge Claude Worrell, making Fears' sentence the shortest of any participant who has so far pleaded guilty to using fire to racially intimidate on the night of August 11, 2017. .

“All suspended but served,” according to the clerk’s worksheet filed in Albemarle County Circuit Court.

That means Fears was sentenced to just over a month in jail, as court records indicate he was arrested on September 14 and released on bond when he pleaded guilty on October 24. His personal commitment allowed him to return home to Texas.

The fears were on display in Charlottesville on August 11 and 12, 2017, respectively the night of the torchlight march at UVa and the day of the deadly Unite the Right rally-turned-riot in downtown Charlottesville. In addition to brandishing a torch at the August 11 march, the next day he saw a shield depicting the “black sun” or “sun wheel”, known in German as a “sonnenrad”, a popular symbol of the Third Reich Nazi. Today, these images are popular among violent white supremacists and neo-Nazis, including the man who murdered 51 Muslim worshipers in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019.

On the morning of August 12, 2017, in Charlottesville, a sticker touting bloodandsoil.org, a web address fashioned from a Nazi slogan, was affixed to Fears' shield.

Lawyer says his client who took part in 2017 torch-carrying crowd is too similar to Nazis to get a fair trial

“Join us in the fight for race and nation,” its sticker urged.

Fears did not fare well legally after Charlottesville. Two months after one of Fears' white supremacist colleagues drove a car through a crowd of counterprotesters on August 12, 2017, killing one and injuring several others, Fears himself was the driver of a car that was almost involved in a bloodbath in Gainesville, Florida.

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After a rowdy speech in Florida by white supremacist and future Unite the Right spokesman Richard Spencer, Fears was behind the wheel of a Jeep that was reportedly attacked by some of Spencer's critics. One of the passengers in the Jeep fired at the pedestrians.

Although no one was injured, Fears pleaded guilty in Alachua County Circuit Court to complicity in attempted murder and received a five-year sentence.

Man convicted of participating in 2017 torch-wielding crowd at UVa faces additional charges in Pennsylvania

Fears' brother, William, was also in the Jeep that day. And although the charges against William Fears were later dropped, he was twice convicted of domestic violence in Texas, was sentenced to a year in prison for his role in the 2017 UVa march, and is now facing a firearms charge in Pennsylvania.

During his sentencing in Florida, Colton Fears reportedly renounced his white nationalist past. At the time of his indictment in Albemarle County last spring, he had been out of prison for a little more than a year and was working, according to his bond sheet, as an electrician for a company that handles drilling operations oil tanker.

Albemarle Commonwealth's Attorney Loses Another Attempt to Prosecute 2017 Torch Case

Before last week's sentencing, Colton Fears was granted a bail modification that allowed him to travel to other states for oil field work.

Neither prosecutor Armin Zijerdi, who was filling in for Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Lawton Tufts that day, nor Fears' attorney, Jessica Phillips, would comment on the sentencing, and Phillips declined to make the defendant available for comments.

Ohio man who participated in torch-carrying crowd at UVa in 2017 to face trial

Attention may soon turn to what is shaping up to be a more contested case, as jury selection begins Tuesday in the trial of Jacob Joseph Dix, the first participant in the 2017 march to contest his charges.

Dix's attorney, Peter Frazier, recently claimed that Dix was targeted by prosecutors because of his blond, square-jawed appearance.

“He's the one they want to get out of this courthouse because he looks like a Nazi,” Frazier said of the 29-year-old defendant from Clarksville, Ohio.