A Virginia man who attacked two staffers of U.S. Rep. Gerry Connolly with a metal baseball bat last year was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Xuan-Kha Tran Pham, 50, of Fairfax was arrested and charged following a violent attack at Connolly’s district office in May 2023.
According to Capitol Police and the Fairfax City Police Department, Pham was armed with a baseball bat when he entered Connolly’s office just before 11 a.m. on May 15 to carry out the assault.
Two victims were wounded in the violent attack and had to be taken to a nearby hospital. One of them, an intern who was there on her first day, was hit in the ribs. The other staffer, Connolly’s outreach director, was hit on the head repeatedly.
Pham appeared in court on Monday, when he repeated “not guilty by reason of insanity” four times to the judge, NBC Washington reported.
The judge accepted his guilty plea on charges that included two counts of malicious wounding, one count of assault and battery, and one count of property destruction.
Pham will now head to a psychiatric hospital for treatment.
According to his attorney, Pham has suffered from mental health issues for years and wasn’t 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,” public defender Dawn Butorac told NBC Washington.
Connolly, an outspoken critic of former President Donald Trump, said in a statement last year Pham had entered his office “armed with a baseball bat and asked for me before committing an act of violence against members of my staff.”
Tom Williams/AP
Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., is pictured on Capitol Hill, Monday, Aug. 24, 2020, in Washington. (Tom Williams/Pool via AP)
On Monday, the congressman said he hopes Pham “continues to receive the institutional treatment he needs so that he does not harm anyone else or himself,” noting his “well-documented” history of mental illness.
However, Connolly also recognized the consequences of violent rhetoric, which he said is “too frequently expressed by too many people.”
“Hate speech and calls to violence are never acceptable and must always be condemned,” Connolly said. “Failure to be civil and show respect for our differences will only result in more incidents like we experienced in May 2023.”
With News Wire Services
