A mentally ill man threatened a woman with a metal baseball bat and chased her through a northern Virginia neighborhood before attacking the office of U.S. Representative Gerald E. Connolly, shattering windows and beating two women, including an intern on her first day at work. authorities said.

Staffers then managed to take shelter in an interior office until officers arrived within five minutes. connolly

(D-Va.)

said they used a stun gun to subdue the man, identified as Xuan-Kha Tran Pham, 49, of Fairfax, Virginia. It was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer ahead of his first appearance Tuesday.

pham

49,

was previously violent and attacked police officers last year. His father, Hy Pham, told the Washington Post

That

his son is schizophrenic and

was treated has been treated

with a mental illness since his late teens. He said he had tried, unsuccessfully, to settle mentally

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are for his son.

None of Pham’s injuries were life-threatening, but Connolly said it showed how vulnerable officials are at a time when political rhetoric has become more bellicose.

I have no reason to believe that his motivation was politically motivated, but it’s possible that the kind of toxic political environment we all live in, you know, confused him, and I hope we would all take a little more time . to be careful about what we say and how we say it, the veteran Democratic congressman, who was out of office at the time, said in an interview.

Connolly said his staffers, including an intern who was hit in the side and an outreach director who was hit on the head, were released after being treated at the hospital. A Fairfax police officer involved in Pham’s arrest was also treated for a minor injury, police spokesman Sergeant Lisa Gardner said.

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At this time, it is not clear what the suspects’ motivation may have been, the U.S. Capitol Police said in a statement announcing a joint investigation with Fairfax City Police.

Police said the man was suspected of a separate attack a short time earlier Monday.

Fairfax County police said a man later identified as Pham approached a woman parked in her car about five miles

away

from Connolly’s office at 10:37 AM. The man asked the woman if she was white, then hit her windshield with a bat and ran away, police said.

Video captured by the neighbors’ camera system at the same location shows a bat-wielding man chasing a woman who can be heard screaming. Dan Ashley, the homeowner, said it was disturbing to see things like this happening in the neighborhood.

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In May 2022, an individual whose name and community of residence match Phams sued the Central Intelligence Agency in federal court.

In a handwritten complaint, the prosecution alleged that since 1988 to the present, the CIA had falsely imprisoned me in a lower perspective from the fourth dimension and brutally tortured me with a degenerate disability.

Last year, officers responded to a Fairfax home after a man called 911 saying he intended to harm others, the Fairfax County Police Department said in a statement. Pham attacked officers and tried to grab a firearm, according to the statement. Police say the officers suffered minor injuries.

Pham was subsequently charged with assaulting a law enforcement officer, resisting arrest and attempting to disarm a law enforcement officer, but the charges were eventually dropped when he entered into an agreement to ensure he would receive mental health treatment, according to a person with the Fairfax County

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a

lawyer who spoke on condition of anonymity because Pham now has an ongoing criminal case.

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Pham met conditions requiring him to seek treatment from his arrest in January 2022 to a nine-month period when charges were dropped in September, the person said.

Connolly, who is currently serving his eighth term as a representative of Virginia’s Fairfax County-based suburban Washington 11th district, said officers should subdue the man with a taser.

He was very violent and agitated. He’s clearly someone who suffers from a serious mental illness, but it underscores to all of us the potential vulnerability of our county offices because we don’t have the level of security we have here on Capitol Hill, Connolly said.

Other Virginia elected officials condemned the violence, including U.S. Senator Mark Warner. He retweeted Connolly’s statement, calling the attack an extremely disturbing development.