U.S. President Donald Trump said he had yet to connect to the family of the victim of the Charlottesville car attack.
“I’ll be reaching out,” Trump told reporters at a press conference in New York on Monday.
Heather Heyer died Saturday when a man rammed his car into a crowd of counter-protestors in Charlottesville, Va., killing the 32-year-old paralegal while also leaving another 19 other people injured.
Trump said Heyer’s mom had reached out to him through social media to “thank” him.
READ MORE: Donald Trump says both ‘alt-left’ and ‘alt-right’ to blame for Charlottesville violence
“Her mother wrote me and said, through I guess Twitter, social media, the nicest things and I very much appreciated that,” Trump said. “I hear she was a fine, really, actually an incredible young woman, but her mother on Twitter thanked me for what I said.”
WATCH: Trump claims Charlottesville victim’s mother wrote him on Twitter
Trump initially refused to place the blame on white supremacists, saying both sides were at fault, but after two days of public criticism, the president eventually made a second statement Monday which branded the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists who take part in violence as “criminals and thugs.”
Heyer’s mother, Susan Bro, released a statement afterwards to thank the president for his declaration.
READ MORE: Charlottesville: Former white supremacists not surprised by deadly violence
“Thank you, President Trump, for those words of comfort and for denouncing those who promote violence and hatred,” Bro said.
On Tuesday, Trump appeared to shy away from Monday’s prepared statement as he once again said both sides were to blame for the violence in Charlottesville.
He praised his own controversial Saturday statement, even pulling it from his suit pocket to read it again.
—With files from the Associated Press
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