As the country continues to process the horrific events that unfolded in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend, when clashes broke out during a white supremacist rally and counter-protest, a man’s heroic act of bravery is standing out.
Marcus Marton, 26, reportedly pushed his fiancée, Marissa Blair, 27, out of the way when a car belonging to a man being identified by media as a white supremacist came barreling toward them. Marton, Blair and their friends were in Charlottesville on Saturday as part of the counter-protests, showing up to push back against white supremacists who were rallying throughout the city.
Blair said her group of friends were laughing, chanting and “having a good time” — until James Alex Fields Jr., allegedly drove his car into the crowd — and panic set in.
A photo captured the moment Marton pushed Blair out of the way and was sent airborne, before the car backed up over him and left him with a broken leg. Remarkably, he saved Blair’s life and survived, as The Daily Mail reported.
“He saved me then he was under the car,” Blair told The Daily Mail of the harrowing ordeal, explaining the details of how it all unfolded. “We hear a commotion from the top of the street. It happened so fast. I felt myself shoved out of the way. [He] had pushed me out of the way. It was so fast. All he could think was to push me.”
She continued, “He saved me then he was under the car. I checked myself and then immediately thought, where’s Marcus?”
Tragically, Heather D. Heyer, the woman who died during the incident, was standing right in front Marton; she was a friend of Blair. The entire incident has left Blair both shocked and saddened.
“It was senseless. People said we were wrong for being there but it was that guy [driver] who was wrong,” she said. “Why would anyone think that it’s okay to do this? He rammed into us.”
As Faithwire previously reported, the chaos unfolded over the weekend in Charlottesville when clashes between white nationalists and counter-protesters — including Black Lives Matter activists and anti-fascist groups known as ANTIFA — turned deadly.