Heather Heyer: Charlottesville victim's mother says 'I will not talk to Trump'

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The mother of Heather Heyer - the woman killed after a white supremacist allegedly drove in to a crowd of anti-fascist protesters - has said she now refuses to talk to Donald Trump.

Susan Bro said the President had initially tried to call her during her daughter's funeral, but that she now refused to take any of the "frantic" subsequent calls from his aides after he equated anti-fascist counter protesters with neo-Nazis.

“I’m not talking to the president now, I’m sorry,” she told ABC News.

“After what he said about my child… it’s not that I’ve seen someone else’s tweets about him, I saw an actual clip of him at a press conference equating the protesters, like Ms Heyer, with the KKK and the white supremacists.”

The mother of the 32-year-old, who was among three people to lose their lives during what is believed to have been one of the gatherings of far right and white supremacists for many years, this week spoke of her daughter at a memorial service in Charlottesville.

“My child’s famous final Facebook post said ‘If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention’,” she said. “My, did she make us pay attention. We talked about all the stuff that caught her attention.”

She then earned a standing ovation, as she added: “They tried to kill my child to shut her up. Well, guess what? You just magnified her.”

Following the incident last weekend, Mr Trump drew widespread criticism for his slow response to events. He initially said he was condemning in the “strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides”. Following criticism that he had sought to draw some equivalence between the neo-Nazis and the activists, he issued a subsequent statement denouncing white supremacists.

Yet at a press conference on Tuesday at Trump Tower, Mr Trump reverted to his initial position. “I think there's blame on both sides. And I have no doubt about it,” he said.

“You had a group on one side that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. No one wants to say that, but I’ll say it right now.”

Mr Trump has since criticised a move that is taking place across the country to remove statues from public places associated with the Confederacy or slavery.

“Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments,” he tweeted.

“You can't change history, but you can learn from it."