Video captures ferocity of attack on Paul Pelosi
Seconds too late: Assailant bashed speaker’s spouse in front of officers
The door of the stately brick home in Pacific Heights opened and there they were. Paul Pelosi, the husband of the U.S. speaker of the House, was clad in a pajama top and boxer shorts. To his right stood David Wayne DePape, an intruder who had arrived through a smashed back door from one of the darkest corners of the internet.
Both men had their hands on a hammer. Within 15 seconds of the door swinging open, DePape seized the weapon, raised it over his head and, with immense force, struck Pelosi over the head, according to a bodycamera video captured by one of two San Francisco police officers who had knocked on the door in the middle of the night.
“What is going on right now?” one of the officers asked a split second before the attack.
The footage was released Friday by law enforcement officials as part of a trove of audio and video recordings showing what happened before and after Pelosi, the 82-year-old husband of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, was nearly killed in the couple’s home in October.
The recordings exposed the brutality, senselessness and chaos of the violence, revealed details about Paul Pelosi’s efforts to summon help through a furtive 911 call, and raised questions about whether San Francisco authorities could have done more to intervene.
They also laid bare the viciousness of moves by rightwing activists and media outlets to spread false and often homophobic claims about what happened — a tack that continued Friday, despite the evidence in the recordings, including the stark image of Pelosi losing his grip on an assailant’s hammer.
One video shows DePape, who was inspired by right-wing
“He’s telling me to put the phone down and just do what he says.” Paul Pelosi to 911 dispatcher, speaking of the intruder who nearly killed him
conspiracy theories about Nancy Pelosi, repeatedly bashing the Pelosis’ back door with a hammer before climbing through the opening he created. An audio recording of DePape speaking to police after the attack reveals he intended to try to force Nancy Pelosi to recant what he called her lies — and harm her if she refused.
“If she told the truth, I would let her go scot-free,” DePape said. “If she f— lied, I was going to break her calves.”
Nancy Pelosi said Friday that her husband’s health was “coming along,” but that recovery “will take more time.” She said she would not review the recordings. “I have absolutely no intention of seeing the deadly assault on my husband’s life,” she said. “I won’t be making any more statements about this case as it proceeds.”
She spoke as millions of people around the world watched the video from a body camera worn by San Francisco police Officer Kolby Wilmes, showing him and Officer Kyle Cagney knocking on the door of the Pelosis’ three-story home at about 2:30 a.m. on Oct. 28.
There is no indication in the video that they understood they were about to encounter the husband of the then-U.S. House speaker.
However, Paul Pelosi had identified himself earlier to the 911 dispatcher who received his emergency call. On Friday, officials with San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management said the agency has protocols for informing officers “when an incident occurs in the proximity of sensitive locations.” The responding officers, officials said, were informed they were being dispatched to the Pelosi residence, one such “sensitive location.”
The footage appears to show that Paul Pelosi opened the door. Just feet from the doorway, DePape and Pelosi stood side by side, each with their right hand on a hammer. DePape’s left hand was clamped on Pelosi’s right wrist, and Pelosi appeared to have a drinking glass in his left hand.
Pelosi said, “Hi, guys, how are ya?”
“How you doing?” one of the officers asked. “What’s going on, man?”
“Everything’s good,” DePape said.
“Drop the hammer!” an officer ordered.
“Um, nope,” DePape responded.
DePape then wrestled the hammer out of Pelosi’s right hand and struck him on the head, knocking him out as the officers rushed in to tackle DePape.
The dramatic recordings were made public two days after San Francisco Superior Court Judge Stephen Murphy ordered their release.
Murphy sided with a consortium of media outlets, including The San Francisco Chronicle, that argued police body-camera footage, surveillance videos and 911 audio from the incident should be widely accessible, given the intense public interest in the case and the significance of the attack.
Portions of the materials in question were played in court and admitted into evidence during DePape’s preliminary hearing.
Depape, 42, has pleaded not guilty to six state charges brought by the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, including attempted murder, and faces additional charges in a parallel proceeding in federal court. He faces up to life in prison if convicted.
Adam Lipson, DePape’s attorney, opposed the release of the recordings, arguing that their dissemination would prejudice potential jurors and prevent his client from getting a fair trial. The District Attorney’s Office also raised concerns about making the recordings public.
Lipson told the judge he feared people would digitally manipulate the recordings. He also argued that the release of the recordings would fuel more unfounded conspiracy theories about the attack, which have proliferated on social media and conservative news outlets. These theories have been spread by former President Donald Trump; Elon Musk; Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas; and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, RGa., among others.
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins dismissed the conspiracy theories just days after the attack. The attack on Paul Pelosi led to additional protections for House speakers after they leave office. Both state and local lawmakers have faced increased threats and violence in recent years.
DePape stands accused of breaking into the Pelosis’ home with the intention to kidnap and interrogate Nancy Pelosi.
A native of Canada, DePape had struggled with mental illness, people who knew him have told The Chronicle. In recent years, he had become consumed with far-right politics and conspiracy theories, and he posted bigoted rants on personal websites that appeared to have no audience.
U.S. Capitol Police surveillance camera footage released Friday shows the moments just before DePape entered the Pelosi home from the back patio. He tucked what appeared to be a hammer into his armpit, then put on what appeared to be gloves. Then he vigorously hammered at the glass at least a dozen times. Finally, he kicked the door in and climbed inside.
He found Paul Pelosi asleep in his bedroom, city prosecutors said in an earlier court filing.
DePape allegedly gripped the hammer in his right hand, and white plastic zip ties in his left, as he asked, “Where’s Nancy?”
Paul Pelosi soon made a furtive 911 call from his bathroom. The full-length recording of the 911 call, also released Friday, captures a harrowing exchange between Pelosi and a dispatcher, in which he made several attempts to convey his fear about the intruder in his home.
It also makes clear that Pelosi identified himself as the husband of Speaker Nancy Pelosi within seconds of calling 911.
The nearly three-minute call began with Pelosi alerting the dispatcher that there was a “gentleman here waiting for my wife to come back, Nancy Pelosi.” The dispatcher asked him if he needed police, fire or medical assistance, to which Pelosi demurred. But he asked if U.S. Capitol Police officers were around.
“Is the Capitol Police around? They’re usually here at the house protecting my wife,” Pelosi said.
“No, this is San Francisco police,” the dispatcher said.
After a brief, mostly inaudible exchange with DePape, Pelosi told the dispatcher, “I got a problem, but he thinks everything’s good. This gentleman just came into the house and he wants to wait here for my wife to come home.”
The dispatcher then asked Pelosi if he knew who the man was. Pelosi responded that he did not, and that the man was telling him “not to do anything.”
The 911 dispatcher followed by asking Pelosi for his address, and then his name, both of which he provided.
“Anyway, this guy says that he thinks … he’s telling me to put the phone down and just do what he says,” Pelosi said.
The dispatcher asked Pelosi what the intruder’s name was, and the intruder himself responded.
“My name’s David,” said DePape, adding later that he was a “friend of theirs.”
The call ended with the dispatcher asking again if Pelosi knew who DePape was, to which he said he did not.
“He’s telling me I’m being very lazy, so I got to stop talking with you. No, he wants me to get the hell off the phone.”
Officers Wilmes and Cagney were dispatched to the home and arrived within 10 minutes of the call, records show. The body-camera video released Friday shows what happened after the officers pulled up.
During the first 19 seconds of the footage, the officers walked up the brick pathway to the house.
“I definitely don’t want all of you,” Wilmes said, twice, before knocking on the front door. It’s not clear what he was referring to.
He turned around and surveyed the dark block, where a street lamp gleamed through tree branches, while a voice asked, “Are you sure this is the one?”
“Yeah,” Wilmes said. Thirty-nine seconds into the video, the door to the Pelosi home opened and the officers found themselves a few feet from two men standing in a carpeted hallway. Paul Pelosi was barefoot and wore a pajama top over boxers, while DePape wore shorts, sneakers, a sweatshirt and a ponytail.
Roughly 14 seconds passed as officers questioned the men before Pelosi was struck by the hammer blow.
Just before the attack, as the officers looked on and shined flashlights on the men, DePape wrested the hammer from Pelosi’s right hand. As he did so, an officer asked, “What is going on right now?” DePape then raised the weapon over his head and struck Pelosi.
“Whoa, s—!” one of the officers said before both officers rushed into the home and tackled DePape. At that point, Pelosi lay unconscious on the floor. Snoring sounds can be heard.
Fifteen seconds later, after struggling with DePape, an officer radioed for backup, classifying the incident as a “Code 3” emergency. Seven seconds later, an officer pulled out handcuffs.
“Give me your f— hands!” he yelled, twice.
Tom Nolan, a former Boston police lieutenant and criminologist who viewed the video Friday, said the police officers appeared to have made proper decisions in a confrontation that unfolded in seconds. “The response we saw in the video is commensurate with the information the police had available to them,” he said.
Generally, he said, police respond with a heightened sense of urgency if they receive multiple 911 calls from the same location or if a caller reports a person is armed, neither of which was the case here. Since Pelosi identified himself to the dispatcher who took the call, police should have arrived with an onduty supervisor, Nolan said. But he said the officers were right not to approach the house with their guns drawn.
But another expert, retired Los Angeles police detective supervisor Timothy Williams, said the officers should have been more assertive, approaching the house with guns drawn “to the low ready” and tackling DePape as soon as they saw the hammer.
Following the attack, Pelosi underwent emergency surgery to repair a fractured skull and wounds to his hands and right arm. He spent six days in the hospital before being released home to continue his recovery.
DePape was hospitalized for his own injuries, which he sustained from allegedly slamming his body into the glass back door to break into the Pelosi home, prosecutors said during the preliminary hearing. Investigators said they found two hammers, a pair of rubber gloves and a sword at the couple’s home after the attack.
Also released Friday was an audio recording of an 18-minute interview with DePape conducted by a San Francisco police sergeant after his arrest.
DePape spouted a host of unfounded conspiracy theories. He said he targeted the Pelosis because the speaker had unfairly smeared Trump with falsehoods. DePape likened the situation to the Watergate scandal, suggesting the Democratic National Committee, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi had conspired to spy on his campaign.
“It originates with Hillary, but like Pelosi ran with the lie as much as or more than anyone. Honestly, like, day in, day out, the person who was on the TV lying every day was Pelosi,” DePape said. “They are criminals. Not only were they spying on a rival campaign. They were submitting fake evidence to spy on a rival campaign, covering it up, persecuting the rival campaign. It’s just like an endless f— crime spree.”
Annie Vainshtein, Rachel Swan and Dustin Gardiner are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: avainshtein@sfchronicle.com, rswan@sfchronicle.com, dustin.gardiner@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @annievain @rachelswan @dustingardiner