A man charged with attacking two congressional staffers with a metal baseball bat is being held pending an initial court appearance
A mentally ill man chased and threatened a woman with a metal baseball bat in a northern Virginia neighborhood before attacking U.S. Rep. Gerry Connolly’s office, shattering windows and striking two women, including an intern on her first day on the job, authorities said.
Staffers then managed to shelter in an inner office until officers arrived, within five minutes. Connolly said they used a stun gun to subdue the man, identified as Xuan-Kha Tran Pham, 49, of Fairfax. He was held without bond at the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center on charges of malicious wounding and aggravated malicious wounding. It was not immediately clear if he had an attorney pending his first appearance Tuesday.
Pham, 49, has been violent before, attacking police officers last year. His father, Hy Pham, told The his son is schizophrenic and had dealt with mental illness since his late teens. He said he had been trying, without success, to arrange mental health care for his son. The father could not immediately be reached by The Associated Press.
None of the injuries Pham inflicted were life threatening, but Connolly said it shows how vulnerable public servants are in an era when political rhetoric has become more bellicose.
“I have no reason to believe that his motivation was politically motivated, 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,” the veteran Democratic congressman, who wasn’t in the office at the time, said in an interview.
Connolly said his staffers — an intern was struck in the side and an outreach director was hit on the head — were released after hospital treatment.
