UPDATE 2-Virginia man pleads guilty to hate crimes tied to Charlottesville riot - local media

Self-described neo-Nazi James Fields, who was convicted of killing Heather Heyer by ramming his car into a crowd protesting a white supremacist rally in Virginia in 2017, pleaded guilty in his federal hate crimes case, local media reported.

Fields, 21, who previously pleaded not guilty to the federal charges, changed his plea during a hearing in U.S. District Court in Charlottesville, Newsradio WRVA in Charlottesville reported. The specific charges that Fields pleaded guilty to were not immediately clear.

He is already facing a sentence of life in prison after being found guilty in state court of Heyer's murder and for injuring 19 in the college town in August 2017. (Reporting by Gary Robertson, additional reporting by Peter Szekely and Joseph Ax in New York and Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; editing by Scott Malone, Bernadette Baum and Susan Thomas)