The man who attacked a Virginia lawmaker last year has been found not guilty after entering a plea of insanity.
Xuan-Kha Tran Pham, age 50, was determined to not be guilty of the 2023 attack at Rep. Gerry Connolly’s office on the grounds that he is not in his right mind. The insanity plea was accepted by a judge in Fairfax County on Monday August 26, freeing the defendant of charges like assault and malicious wounding.
The suspect was arrested and charged immediately after the attack, which occurred in May 2023. Two congressional staffers—including an intern who was working her first day—were injured by Pham, who struck both of them with a baseball bat.
A statement from Connolly at the time revealed that the two aides—one who was hit in the side and another in the head—were attacked when Pham came to try and kill the Democratic representative. The aides recovered from their injuries after receiving treatment at the hospital.
Pham was represented by a public defender, attorney Dawn Butorac, who noted that he was mentally ill and had not been on top of his prescriptions when he went into the office with the bat. Butorac told the court that the defendant had been sick for decades, saying that he has had “delusions about government conspiracies” among his symptoms.
Pham is said to have approached multiple government organizations with the intention of seeking help as he was under the impression that the “government was imprisoning him.” Now that he has been deemed insane as his illness relates to the charges against him, the defendant will receive treatment from a psychiatric hospital.
Connolly said in a statement that he is hopeful Pham receives the necessary treatment to prevent “harm[ing]” both himself and others. He also took aim at inflammatory political narratives that are “too frequently expressed” by a lot of people. The representative also emphasized that rhetoric which incites violence is “never acceptable” and “must always be condemned.”
