An attacker wielding a baseball bat stormed Rep. Gerry Connolly’s (D-VA) Virginia office on Monday, demanding to speak to Connolly before swinging at two staffers who had to be hospitalized, his office said.
Police in Fairfax confirmed they were called out to Connolly’s office to investigate an assault on two employees. The assailant struck one aide in the head and another—an intern on her first day in the office—on the side of her torso, CNN reported. He also shattered glass in a conference room and struck several computers.
“The victims are being treated for non-life-threatening injuries. The suspect is in police custody,” Fairfax police tweeted.
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U.S. Capitol Police later identified the suspect as a 49-year old local named Xuan Kha Tran Pham, and said he was wielding a metal bat. He is facing charges of aggravated malicious wounding and malicious wounding.
A wild video shared with NBC4 Washington by a neighbor who lives near the suspect shows a man—allegedly Pham—chasing an unnamed woman with a bat through the front yard of a suburban home Monday just minutes before the attack on Connolly’s office.
“At this time, it is not clear what the suspect’s motivation may have been. Based on what we know right now, investigators do not have any information that the suspect was known to the USCP,” the agency said.
Pham filed a wacky lawsuit last year against the Central Intelligence Agency that claimed he had been wrongfully imprisoned in a “lower perspective”—part of a scheme to torture him from the “fourth dimension,” according to NBC News.
He represented himself in the $29 million case, which the CIA has moved to have dismissed.
Connolly also confirmed to CNN that Pham is apparently a constituent in his district who was “filled with an out-of-control rage.”
Connolly, 73, has represented Virginia’s 11th congressional district for 14 years.
Recently, he has slammed Donald Trump for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll, demanded Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas resign over ethical missteps, and criticized the GOP’s stance on immigration.
