A man who waged a violent attack inside U.S. Rep. Gerry Connolly’s district office in Northern Virginia last year is headed to a psychiatric hospital instead of prison, as News4 is first to report.
Xuan-Kha Tran Pham appeared in court Monday and pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity after the attack in Connolly’s district office in Fairfax on May 15, 2023.
Prosecutors say Pham chased a woman, threatened her with a metal bat and struck her car in a neighborhood and then headed to Connolly’s office. There, he repeatedly hit a congressional staffer in the head with the bat and hit an intern in the ribs, authorities say. It was the intern's first day.
“As he was hitting me, he kept repeating, ‘You’re going to die’ over and over again,” the staffer previously testified.
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In court on Monday, Pham repeated “not guilty by reason of insanity” four times, as the judge asked for his plea. He entered the plea on two counts of malicious wounding, one count of assault and battery, and one count of property destruction, connected to the neighborhood attack.
The judge accepted Pham’s plea and said two doctors who evaluated him concluded he was insane at the time of the attacks. Pham’s defense attorney, Dawn Butorac, told News4 that Pham, 50, has suffered from serious mental illness since the 1990s and was not properly medicated at the time of the attack.
“Unfortunately, he’s suffered from delusions about government conspiracies and a variety of other things and he’d gone to a variety of government agencies in an attempt to get help because he believed the government was imprisoning him and all sorts of other things,” Butorac said. “He’s just very ill and this whole incident is a byproduct of his mental illness, and that’s why he’ll be in a hospital for the foreseeable future.”
Butorac described Pham as an “intelligent” man who “wants to be in a place where he can get help.”
'The healing process continues'
Connolly was not inside the district office at the time of the attack. In a statement to News4 on Monday, he said “the healing process continues” and spoke out against “violent rhetoric.”
“It has been over a year since Mr. Pham entered my office with the intent to harm me and my staff. As the healing process continues, I remain grateful for the community’s support and inspired by my staff’s incredible courage and recovery,” Connolly said.
“Mr. Pham’s history of mental illness is well documented and lasts today. I pray he continues to receive the institutional treatment he needs so that he does not harm anyone else or himself. As a community, however, we must recognize the serious consequences of the inflammatory and violent rhetoric that is too frequently expressed by too many people.
"Hate speech and calls to violence are never acceptable and must always be condemned. Failure to be civil and show respect for our differences will only result in more incidents like we experienced in May 2023.”
The staffer who was injured declined to comment on Monday.
‘A man burst through the door’
Disturbing video shows a woman running and screaming as a man chases her with a metal bat. Pham’s neighbors said he confronted her in her car, asked if she was white and smashed her windshield at about 10:35 a.m. on May 15, 2023.
Minutes later, Pham showed up at Connolly’s district office. At a hearing in November, a staffer said she was training an intern on her first day when a man suddenly rushed through the door.
“A man burst through door, took a couple of steps toward me, lifted a bat and swung and hit me in my arm," she testified.
The staffer fell to the ground as the attacker repeatedly hit her and the intern screamed. He repeated again and again that she was going to die, the staffer said.
A postal worker happened to arrive and yelled for the attacker to get off her. That’s when she able to get away.
Police were called to the office at about 10:50 a.m. and City of Fairfax Police Sgt. James Lewis arrived. He testified that he ordered Pham to drop the bat.
“I had my service weapon pointed at him. I tased him and he dropped the bat," Lewis said.
Police body camera video shows Pham falling to the ground as several officers handcuff him.
The staffer said she was treated for a concussion. She was still receiving occupational and physical therapy six months after the attack.
Pham has primarily been held in a state psychiatric hospital since his arrest. He will be evaluated for 45 days. He’s expected in court for a status update on Nov. 1.
A federal case also is pending, in which Pham is charged with assaulting a U.S. government employee.
Stay with NBC Washington for more details on this developing story.
