RICHMOND, Va. – A Virginia man who is an acknowledged member of the Ku Klux Klan was sentenced Tuesday to three years and eight months in prison for driving his pickup truck through a crowd of Black Lives Matter protesters in Virginia last year.
Harry H. Rogers, 37, of Hanover, pleaded guilty last week to three counts of assault; and one count of destruction of property; and one count of hit and run, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. Each misdemeanor charge carried a penalty of up to a year in jail.
Rogers was arrested near the A.P. Hill statue in Richmond on June 7, 2020, after witnesses said he drove into the group of protestors, WRIC reported.
No one was seriously injured. Rogers drove over one man’s toe and twice struck one woman who had stepped in front of the truck, according to The Associated Press.
Before Rogers’ arrest, he had bragged about his actions on social media. “This Chevrolet 2500 went up on the curb and through the protest,” he said in a Facebook live video played in court last week, the Times-Dispatch reported. “It’s kind of funny if you ask me.”
He was convicted of the misdemeanor charges in August and appealed the General District court’s convictions to Circuit Court, where he would have faced three additional felony charges of malicious wounding, the television station reported.
Instead, Rogers decided to plead guilty to the misdemeanors, and the felony charges and a fourth misdemeanor charge were dropped, WRIC reported.
Henrico Circuit Judge L.A. Harris Jr. said he was not sentencing Rogers because of his ties to the KKK or his beliefs, but rather on his actions that day based on those beliefs, the Times-Dispatch reported.
“You cannot take these situations into your own hands,” Harris said. “That leads to chaos.”
