Virginia Man Charged in Baseball Bat Attack on Congressional Staff Also Facing Hate Crime Charge

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.

Xuan Kha Tran Pham

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.

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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. {snip}

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In May 2022, a person whose name and community of residence matches Xuan-Kha Pham’s sued the Central Intelligence Agency in federal court.

In a hand-written complaint, the plaintiff alleged the CIA had been “wrongfully imprisoning me in a lower perspective” and “brutally torturing me with a degenerating disability consistently since 1988 till the present from the fourth dimension.”

Last year, Pham assaulted responding officers and tried to take a firearm after calling dispatch saying he wished to harm others, Fairfax County Police said in a statement. It said the officers sustained minor injuries.

Pham was charged with assault on a law enforcement officer, resisting arrest and attempting to disarm a law enforcement officer, and then entered an agreement designed to ensure he received mental health treatment {snip}

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