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Neo-Nazi who beat a black man with a 2-by-4 in Charlottesville pleads guilty

He was wearing a white hard hat that read “Commie Killer” when he was filmed beating DeAndre Harris

A third man involved in the brutal beating of a black man in a parking garage during the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville last August has been convicted.

Daniel Borden is seen in footage circulated widely after the rally in the Virginia college town, beating DeAndre Harris with a two-by-four, among a group of six white men attacking him with slabs of wood and metal pipes. They left him with a head laceration that required multiple staples, a broken wrist, a chipped tooth, and other injuries. The photos and footage of the assault, which quickly went viral, were used to identify the men involved. Nineteen-year-old Borden, from Ohio, took a type of plea Tuesday in which he didn’t admit guilt but confessed that prosecutors have enough evidence to convict him. His case had been set to go to trial next month.

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Borden was reportedly known in his hometown for giving Nazi salutes, according to the New York Daily News. He was wearing a white hard hat that read “Commie Killer” when he was filmed beating Harris. He was among hundreds of neo-Nazis and white supremacists who descended on Charlottesville for the Unite the Right rally, many carrying torches and chanting anti-Semitic slurs as they marched through the town.

Two of the other men who injured Harris, Alex Ramos and Jacob Goodwin, have already been found guilty of malicious wounding, a charge that carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Borden pleaded to the same charge. A fourth man, Tyler Davis, is awaiting trial.

In the run-up to finding the white supremacists guilty, a lawyer who moonlights as a state chairman of the League of the South, a neo-Confederate organization, Harold Ray Crews, cherrypicked video footage from the assault, finding a shot in which Harris can be seen swinging a flashlight at him. He submitted the clip to authorities in Charlottesville, and got Harris charged with felony assault.

The charges against Harris were dropped in March.

Borden will be sentenced on Oct. 1. And he’s not the only white supremacist facing charges after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. James Alex Fields Jr., who drove his car into a crowd of anti-fascist protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer, is facing charges of second-degree murder. And Richard Preston, a KKK leader from Maryland, was convicted of firing a gun near a school during the rally earlier this month.