FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) — A man charged with attacking two staffers for Rep. Gerry Connolly with a baseball bat in his district office is also being charged with a hate crime, accused of damaging a car and chasing a woman in a Virginia neighborhood less than an hour earlier.
Xuan-Kha Tran Pham, 49, of Fairfax was arraigned Tuesday by video hookup from the Fairfax County jail. Pham refused to appear, so a judge read the four counts against him while he huddled under a blanket in his cell.
The charges include aggravated wounding and malicious aggravated wounding for the baseball bat attack on two staffers at Connolly’s district office in Fairfax. They also include a misdemeanor hate crime charge, and a felony count of destroying property.’
Police say Pham approached a woman parked in her car Monday morning, asked if she was white, and then hit her windshield with a baseball bat. A video recorded on a neighbor’s home camera system shows a man with a bat chasing a woman who can be heard screaming.
The judge ruled Tuesday that he’ll be held without bond pending a preliminary hearing in July.
Pham’s father, Hy Pham, told The Washington Post his son was diagnosed with schizophrenia and has dealt with mental illness since his late teens. He told the Post that 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…
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