A man armed with a baseball bat and demanding to see Representative Gerald E. Connolly, Democrat of Virginia, attacked and injured two staff aides on a ramp inside the congressman’s office in Fairfax, Va., the latest a period of increasing political violence throughout the country.
Xuan Kha Tran Pham, 49, of Fairfax, faces charges for one count of felony aggravated malicious wounding and one count of malicious wounding, according to the Fairfax City Police Department. He was held without bond.
The police said that they do not yet have a definite motive, and the Police Headquarters in a statement said that they do not know the suspect.
Sgt. Lisa Gardner, spokeswoman for the Fairfax City Police, said in a press conference on Monday afternoon that the assailant entered the office of Mr. Connolly just after 10:30 a.m. with what appeared to be a metal baseball bat and struck two staff members upstairs. body.
Both employees were conscious when police arrived about five minutes after a 911 call, he said. Mr. Connolly said in a statement that the individual committed “an act of violence” and that the two assistants were taken to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries.
“You can tell the people inside are scared; they are hiding,” said Sergeant Gardner.
“Frankly it’s scary that someone can come into the office with a baseball bat and just start swinging at innocent victims,” he added.
Mr. Connolly represents a part of the Northern Virginia suburbs west of Washington, DC He was first elected to Congress in 2008. In a statement after the attack, he said he had “the best team in Congress.”
“My district office staff make themselves available to constituents and members of the public every day,” Mr. Connolly said. “To think that someone would take advantage of the accessibility of my staff to commit an act of violence is absurd and harmful.”
Mr. told CNN’s Connolly said the attacker hit one of his senior aides in the head with a metal bat, and hit an intern — on his first day on the job — in the side.
While members of Congress are protected on Capitol Hill in the United States Capitol, their district offices generally do not receive such protection unless there is a specific known threat to the member.
In the attack on Monday, the killer caused great damage to the office of Mr. Connolly, broke the glass in the conference room and destroyed the computers.
Mr. Pham was taken into custody within five minutes of police arriving at the scene.
Last year, Mr. Pham filed a federal lawsuit in Virginia against the CIA alleging that the agency imprisoned him for decades in an “inferior view based on physics called the book of world” and asked for $29 million. The suit, written by hand, says the agency “brutally tortured” him with a “degenerative disability” from the “fourth dimension.”
Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the top Democrat in the House, called the attack “horrific.”
“We are grateful to the members of law enforcement and medical professionals who acted quickly to arrest the suspect and care for the affected members of our Capitol Hill community,” Mr. Jeffries said. “The safety of our members and our staff remains paramount, especially given the increasing instances of political violence in our country.”
Mr. Jeffries said he asked the House sergeant-at-arms and the Capitol to “take every available precaution to protect members and our staff, who serve the American people with patriotism and love and deserve to do it without fear for their safety.”
The attack comes amid an increase in threats and violent political speech against members of Congress in recent years. Last October, an intruder beat Representative Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, with a hammer inside their San Francisco home after the attacker yelled, “Where’s Nancy?”
Last month, J. Thomas Manger, the chief of the Capitol Police, testified on Capitol Hill about the heightened threat climate across the country.
Last year, there were more than 7,500 threats against members of Congress. In 2017, there were less than 4,000 threats.
“One of the biggest challenges we face today is dealing with the dramatic increase in the number of threats against members of Congress – approximately 400 percent in the last six years,” he said. “Over the course of the last year, the world has continued to change, becoming more violent and uncertain.”