Six people were arrested Saturday night after rioters in Richmond, Virginia damaged several businesses and set a city garbage truck on fire, actions the mayor said were caused by “white supremacists marching under the banner of Black Lives Matter,” WWBT NBC-12 reported.
Several hundred people were involved in the unrest, which stretched a mile and a half from the Richmond Police headquarters to Virginia Commonwealth University.
Four of the people arrested were charged with unlawful assembly misdemeanors and released. Another was charged with unlawful assembly and felony rioting with a firearm. The sixth was charged with assaulting a law enforcement officer, a felony, and rioting.
Rioters threw bricks and other items at firefighters working to extinguish the truck fire, officials said.
“There were white supremacists marching under the banner of Black Lives Matter, an attempt to undermine an otherwise overwhelmingly peaceful movement toward social justice,” Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney said. “We’ve spoken on many occasions about those who’ve chosen a more violent route to express their discontent and what that does for the overall movement toward social justice.”
Richmond Police Chief Gerald Smith said in a Sunday press conference, “We have identified some individuals who have been seen with the Boogaloo boys and some Antifa groups around the area.”
Smith reported that the police were able to determine that an online flier being distributed to promote the incident was produced outside of Richmond and circulated in the region to incite violence. The police, Smith said, were using video footage to identify those involved.