A Northern Virginia man who attacked staff members of U.S. Rep. Gerry Connolly’s district office with a baseball bat was found not guilty by reason of insanity Monday.
A Fairfax County judge has accepted the insanity plea of Xuan-Kha Tran Pham, 50, of Fairfax, on charges including malicious wounding and assault.
Pham was arrested and charged in May 2023 after the attack. Two employees were injured, including an intern who was on her first day. The intern was punched in the ribs and the other employee was repeatedly punched in the head.
Connolly, a Democrat who represents parts of Northern Virginia, said Pham came there with the intention of killing him.
Pham’s lawyer, prosecutor Dawn Butorac, told WRC-TV that Pham has suffered from a serious mental illness for decades and was not receiving proper medication at the time of the attack.
“Unfortunately, he suffered from delusions about government conspiracies and all sorts of things. He went to all sorts of government agencies to get help because he believed that the government was imprisoning him and all sorts of things,” Butorac said.
Pham is now being sent to a psychiatric hospital for treatment.
In a written statement, Connolly said he hopes Pham gets the treatment he needs “so he doesn’t harm anyone else or himself.” He said the attack shows the consequences of inflammatory political rhetoric “spent too often by too many people.”
“Hate speech and calls for violence are never acceptable and must always be condemned,” he wrote. “Failure to be civil and respectful of our differences will only lead to more incidents like the one we experienced in May 2023.”
