SAN FRANCISCO — The husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., recalled Monday being bludgeoned by a hammer-wielding assailant and waking up in a pool of his own blood.
Paul Pelosi, 83, took the witness stand to testify against the man accused of attacking him with a hammer in a politically motivated attack on Oct. 28, 2022.
“The door opened, and a very large man came in with a hammer in one hand and some ties in the other, and he said, ‘Where’s Nancy?’ as I think that woke me up,” Pelosi testified. “I’m asleep, and he bursts in the door, and that woke me up.”
Pelosi sustained a fractured skull.
The suspect, David DePape, has pleaded not guilty to attempted kidnapping of a federal official and assault on the immediate family member of a federal official.
Pelosi testified he didn’t set his home’s alarm before he went to bed, so there was no warning sound when the attacker broke the glass of a rear door to enter.
The assailant had a hammer and zip ties, and, Pelosi said, “I recognized I was in serious danger.”
“He was standing in the doorway, and I assume he was 3, 4 feet away from me,” Pelosi testified. “It was a tremendous sense of shock to see somebody broken into the house.”
When Pelosi told his attacker that his wife was in Washington, D.C., DePape allegedly said he’d have to tie him up and they’d wait for her return.
Pelosi managed to get his cellphone and call 911 from the bathroom before DePape snatched the phone away, he testified.
Pelosi said he knew his best chance to survive was to get downstairs to meet responding police, and he testified that he told DePape: “Since all your stuff is downstairs, why don’t we go downstairs? You can tie me up, and you can get some sleep.”
When officers arrived, Pelosi said, he reached for DePape’s hand, with the hammer, before DePape pushed him away and started hitting him.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Laura Vartain asked Pelosi what he remembered next, and he said: “Waking up in a pool of blood.”
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