VICE: This Couple Survived the Unite the Right Car Attack. The Trauma Tore Them Apart.

By Tess Owen, Vice News. Read the full article here.

On the day of the violent “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Marcus Martin wore his red-and-white Jordans. Those shoes were special to Martin, not only because they happened to be rare, and he considers himself a sneaker-head—but because his fiancée at the time, Marissa Blair, had given them to him for Christmas. 

Martin was wearing those shoes when he, Blair, and their friend Heather Heyer, joined up with counter protestors at an intersection in downtown Charlottesville, as neo-Nazis and white nationalists violently rallied in the nearby streets. 

He was also wearing those shoes when he pushed Blair out of harms’ way as a neo-Nazi accelerated a car into the crowd, sending bodies flying, leaving dozens injured and Heyer dead. The moment was immortalized in a Pulitzer-prize winning photo: Martin was captured mid-air. Blair was recording a video shortly before the car tore into the crowd, and it was still recording afterward: You can hear her screaming Martin’s name as she looked for him in the wreckage.

When Martin got to the hospital later that day, he had a fractured ankle, a shattered lower leg, and just one red Jordan on—the other was still at that intersection, alongside twisted metal, discarded protest signs, and traces of blood. 

Martin and Blair are now two of nine plaintiffs in a massive civil suit, Sines v. Kessler that seeks to hold the architects of the “Unite the Right” rally accountable for allegedly conspiring to incite racially motivated violence in Charlottesville. The plaintiffs are residents of the small college town, of varying ages and backgrounds, who say they’ve suffered long-term emotional and physical injuries as a result of the rally and the torch-lit march on the University of Virginia’s campus the night before. The lawyers are seeking monetary damages from the organizers, with the goal of bankrupting their organizations and sending a clear warning to white supremacists across the U.S.

Continue reading at vice.com.