Speaker Nancy Pelosi has revealed that her husband was so gravely injured following the hammer attack at their San Francisco home that surgeons had to “take off the skull, reshape it, and put it back”.
“It had cracked,” a shaken Ms Pelosi told CNN, adding that Paul Pelosi’s head was struck “on the top, in two places”.
The suspect, David DePape, was after the speaker when he broke into the home in the middle of the night, repeatedly shouting “where’s Nancy?”
Following the attack on 28 October, the 42-year-old suspect has been charged with attempted murder, attempted kidnapping, and assault.
According to the US attorney’s office for the Northern District of California, one of the charges is “attempted kidnapping of a US official,” which concerns the speaker. Mr DePape told police that he planned to hold her hostage, an unsealed FBI affidavit said.
“What they have to do is they have to take off the skull, reshape it, and put it back so it isn’t scratched or [could] pierce the brain,” Ms Pelosi told CNN, recalling her husband’s surgery.
She remembered it as “a pretty serious operation” and that her husband’s injuries were “drastic” and “pretty awful”.
“But the good news was … they told us it had not pierced his brain, which could be deadly,” she added.
The speaker said one of the more difficult things to handle is that the attacker was after her, not her husband, but he was still the one who was injured.
“For me, this is really the hard part – because Paul was not the target, and he’s the one who’s paying the price,” she said.
“It’s really sad because it is a flame that was fueled by misinformation … that has no place in our democracy,” she added.
She admitted that the attack on her husband may impact whether she chooses to retire from politics. The couple, both aged 82, have been married since the early 1960s.
Ms Pelosi shared a rare moment of levity when she spoke of the moment their son told Mr Pelosi that his wife was on her way to see him.
“The first thing he said [was] ‘oh, your mother’s gonna be very happy because the [Baltimore] Ravens won last night,’” the speaker said of her husband’s first words after coming out of surgery.
Ms Pelosi grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, where both her father and her brother served as mayor.
“So we thought, ‘well, OK, he’s with it’,” the speaker told CNN.
While Ms Pelosi said her husband knows that he is in for a “long haul” towards recovery, she said he’s “such a gentleman, he’s not complaining”.
The speaker said she hadn’t yet heard any 911 calls or viewed any bodycam footage from the attack. She added that she hasn’t spoken about the attack with Mr Pelosi as it’s “too traumatizing”.
But she said she has heard that he “was cool. Paul’s cool,” adding that he “called 911 with enough information, but not too much information” to enrage the “threatening” attacker.
“He saved his life — Paul saved his own life with that call,” she said.
Mr DePape entered the residence at some point after 2am on 28 October, according to the criminal complaint.
He repeatedly shouted “where is Nancy?” when he confronted Mr Pelosi, who was alone in bed at the time of the break-in.
“When Pelosi told him that Nancy was not there, DePape stated that he would sit and wait,” the complaint said. “Pelosi stated that his wife would not be home for several days and then DePape reiterated that he would wait.”
“DePape stated he wanted to tie Pelosi up so that DePape could go to sleep as he was tired from having had to carry a backpack to the Pelosi residence,” at which point he began “taking out twist ties from his pocket so that he could restrain Pelosi. Pelosi moved towards another part of the house, but DePape stopped him and together they went back into the bedroom”.
It was at this point that Mr Pelosi entered the bathroom and called 911.
“DePape remembered thinking that there was no way the police were going to forget about the phone call,” the complaint states. “DePape explained that he did not leave after Pelosi’s call to 911 because, much like the American founding fathers with the British, he was fighting against tyranny without the option of surrender.”
According to the complaint, Mr DePape said they went downstairs.
“The police arrived and knocked on the door, and Pelosi ran over and opened it. Pelosi grabbed onto DePape’s hammer, which was in Depape’s hand,” the legal filing states. “At this point in the interview, DePape repeated that DePape did not plan to surrender and that he would go ‘through’ Pelosi.”
Officers were dispatched to the family’s home at 2.27am, police said previously.
When they arrived on the scene, Mr DePape and Mr Pelosi were both seen struggling for control of a hammer.
The suspect pulled the hammer from Mr Pelosi and “violently assaulted him with it,” San Francisco Police Chief William Scott said.
Chief Scott added that officers “immediately tackled” Mr DePape and took him into custody.
