A Democratic congressman’s office is reeling after two staffers were attacked by a baseball bat-wielding man who was allegedly looking for the lawmaker.
The man, identified as Xuan Kha Tran Pham by the City of Fairfax Police Department, was arrested on Monday for the attack at the district office of Gerry Connolly in Fairfax, Virginia.
Authorities are now working to determine the suspect’s motive as the two staffers recover from non-life-threatening injuries.
Mr Pham visited Mr Connolly’s office where he asked staffers for Mr Connolly directly - though the Virginia Representative said in a statement he does not think the motive was political.
“I have the best team in Congress,” Mr Connolly said in a statement. “My district office staff make themselves available to constituents and members of the public every day. The thought that someone would take advantage of my staff’s accessibility to commit an act of violence is unconscionable and devastating.”
Here’s what we know so far:
What happened at Rep Connolly’s office?
US Capitol Police and the City of Fairfax Police Department said Mr Pham, 49, of Fairfax, entered the office around 10.49am EST on Monday with a metal baseball bat and assaulted the two staffers.
The suspect allegedly visited the politician’s district office and asked for the congressman while holding the baseball bat before attacking the two staffers.
Mr Connolly was not in his office at the time of the assaults.
One of the staffers, an intern working on her first day in the office, was hit on the side while another, an outreach director, was hit on the head with the bat.
Fairfax Police said in a statement that they arrived within five minutes after the attack and took the suspect into custody.
Shocking video captures second alleged attack
Video footage, taken from a doorbell camera on a home close to Mr Connolly’s district office, shows what appears to be Mr Pham holding a baseball bat and chasing a woman who ran away from him, screaming.
In the video, the woman can be heard shouting, “What is he doing, call the police.”
Police questioned Mr Pham over the incident, which reportedly unfolded when the woman was sitting in her car and was approached by a man holding a bat.
The man asked her whether she was white, before hitting her windshield with the bat when she fled her vehicle, Sky News reported.
NEW: Neighbor tell @jackiebensen his doorbell camera captured suspect in bat attack at @GerryConnolly office chasing a woman with a bat minutes earlier. Fairfax County Police confirm charges pending @nbcwashington pic.twitter.com/824OvypDKv
— Tom Lynch (@TomLynch_) May 15, 2023
What we know about the suspect
Police confirmed that they had taken Mr Pham into custody following the attack. The Fairfax resident was not known to Mr Connolly, the politician said.
The suspect is being held without bond at Fairfax County Adult Detention Center after police secured warrants for felony aggravated malicious wounding and malicious wounding. They have not yet established a potential motive for the attack.
Mr Connolly told the Associated Press following the attack, “I have no reason to believe that his motivation was political … but it is possible that the sort of toxic political environment we all live in, you know, set him off, and I would just hope all of us would take a little more time to be careful about what we say and how we say it.”
According to reports, Mr Pham previously launched a lawsuit against the CIA for $29m in 2022.
He said at the time that, “The CIA has been guilty of wrongfully imprisoning me in a lower perspective based on physics called the book world since 1995,” according to the complaint. He also accused the agency of torturing him, “from the fourth dimension”.
Mr Pham’s father, Hy Pham, said in an interview with The Washington Post that Mr Pham allegedly has schizophrenia and was struggling to access mental health care.
Hy Pham told The Post that his son had struggled with mental health issues since he was a teenager.
Lawmakers condemn political violence
Other elected officials from Virginia condemned the violence, among them Senators Rand Paul, Mark Warner and Amy Klobuchar.
Mr Warner retweeted Mr Connolly’s statement, calling the attack an, “extraordinarily disturbing development”.
“Intimidation and violence – especially against public servants – has no place in our society,” he said.
Pennsylvania Senator Paul tweeted thoughts and prayers to Mr Connolly’s staff adding: “All of Congress and our staffs need more security. In the long run, violent perpetrators need to be severely punished nd separated from society.”
Senator Klobuchar tweeted: “Political violence is never acceptable.”
Representative Shontel Brown (D-OH) tweeted: “Congressional staff are dutiful public servants that work tirelessly to assist constituents. Serving the people should never put them in danger.”
Since the January 6 attack on the Capitol, threats to lawmakers and their families have increased sharply.
The US Capitol Police investigated around 7,500 cases of potential threats against members of Congress in 2022. The year before, they investigated around 10,000 threats to members, more than twice the number from four years earlier.
In October, a man broke into the San Francisco home of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, demanding to speak with her, before he smashed her husband, Paul, over the head with a hammer.
Associated Press contributed to this report
