Suspect in baseball bat attack on Rep. Gerry Connolly’s staff allegedly chased woman minutes earlier
Chilling video footage shows a screaming woman fleeing a baseball bat-wielding man — moments before he allegedly stormed Rep. Gerry Connolly’s Virginia office, attacking two staffers and injuring a cop.
The door-cam clip emerged as it was revealed that the 49-year-old suspect, Xuan-Kha Tran Pham, has a history of mental illness — including a previous attack on police in which he tried to take a gun.
Monday’s video showed the woman, dressed all in black, screaming in clear terror as she flees through a yard in Fairfax County just moments before the rampage at Connolly’s nearby district office.
Her pursuer eventually gives up the chase, walking back with the metal bat in hand as the shocked woman screams, “What is he doing?”
Police later identified him as Pham, saying he stopped a woman in her car — then smashed her windshield after asking if she was white.
Pham was charged with a hate crime for that, along with aggravated wounding and malicious aggravated wounding for the baseball bat attack on Connolly’s staffers. He also faces a felony count of destroying property.
He refused to appear at his arraignment Tuesday, so a judge read the charges via a video hookup while Pham huddled under a blanket in his cell. He was ordered held without bond until a hearing in July.
Neighbor Dan Ashley said he found the footage of the “screaming and terrified” woman after police linked the terror in his neighborhood to the bat attack at the lawmaker’s office.
“I heard about the Gerry Connolly thing on the news, but I had no idea that it was so close to home,” Ashley told reporters.
Pham was allegedly armed with the same metal bat when he stormed into the district office of Connolly (D-Va.), who told the Washington Post he’d been at a ribbon-cutting for a nearby food bank at the time.
The attacker asked, “Where’s Connolly?” — then flipped out when told he was not there, the lawmaker said.
He allegedly hit an intern — who was on her first day in the office — in the side of the body as she sat at the reception desk, then struck the office’s outreach director on the back of the head with the bat.
Another staffer — a retired Army sergeant — herded staffers into an office to safeguard them, Connolly told the DC paper.
“The man then went on a rampage and was smashing glass windows and a computer,” Connolly said.
A responding cop also received a minor injury in the arrest, in which officers used a stun gun to subdue Pham.
Connolly’s staffers were discharged from the hospital later Monday.
“We are extremely, extremely happy this wasn’t worse,” Fairfax City Police spokesperson Lisa Gardner told the Washington Post.
The attack is also being investigated by Capitol Police, who said that “it is not clear what the suspect’s motivation may have been.”
There may not even be a real motive, suggested Connolly, who said: “I think we’re talking about real mental illness.”
His father, Hy Pham, told the Washington Post his son is schizophrenic and had dealt with mental illness since his late teens, adding that his son heard voices but refused to take medication.
A year ago, Pham sued the CIA in federal court for “wrongfully imprisoning me in a lower perspective” and “brutally torturing me … from the fourth dimension.”
“He blamed the FBI for making him sick,” his dad also said. “He blamed the Navy for making him sick.”
Last year, officers responded to a Fairfax home after a man called dispatch saying he wished to harm others, Fairfax County Police said.
Pham assaulted responding officers and attempted to take a firearm, leaving officers with minor injuries.
He was initially charged with four felonies, including assault on a law enforcement officer, resisting arrest and attempting to disarm a law enforcement officer.
However, those charges were dropped “as part of an agreement that ensured the individual was complying with mental health services,” the Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office said.
Pham complied with conditions requiring him to seek treatment from his arrest in January through a nine-month period when the charges were dropped in September, a source in the office said.
“He’s obviously somebody suffering from serious mental illness,” Connolly said.
Even so, “it does underscore for all of us the vulnerability potentially of our district offices because we don’t have the level of security we have here on Capitol Hill,” he said.
Other elected officials from Virginia condemned the violence, among them US Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who called the attack an “extraordinarily disturbing development.”
“Intimidation and violence — especially against public servants — has no place in our society,” Warner said.
With Post wires
