South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Police: Paul Pelosi tricked intruder
Suspect could hear 911 call containing clues to operator
LOS ANGELES — It was early Friday morning when someone broke through the rear door of a large hillside home in San Francisco’s exclusive Pacific Heights neighborhood.
The home belonged to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband, Paul, and police allege the man who broke in, David DePape, 42, was on a mission.
Nancy Pelosi was in Washington, D.C., with her protective detail. But Paul Pelosi was home.
New details are emerging of what happened next, an attack that left Paul Pelosi seriously injured in what police say was an intentional act and left many stunned at yet another display of political violence.
According to police, DePape allegedly entered the house and at some point confronted Paul Pelosi.
Pelosi told the intruder that he had to use the bathroom, then made a surreptitious 911 call on his cellphone and left the line open, sources familiar with the attack told the Los Angeles Times. Dispatcher Heather Grimes could hear Pelosi talking to his attacker and alerted officers to the scene.
In a communication between a dispatcher and a police car, the dispatcher says “there’s a male in the home and that he’s going to wait for his wife.” The dispatcher said the man on the line “doesn’t know who the male is, but he advised
that his name is David and then (said) he is a friend.” The caller, she added, “sounded somewhat confused.”
A law enforcement source in San Francisco said officials believe Pelosi was intentionally giving coded information because the intruder knew Pelosi was on the phone and wanted to signal to the dispatcher that something was wrong.
At a news conference Friday, San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott praised Grimes’ quick thinking.
“She had to interpret what
she was being told,” he said at the news conference. “And based on her experience and intuition, she basically figured out that there was something more to this incident than what she was being told. Her actions, in my opinion, resulted in both a higher-priority dispatch and a faster police response.”
It took police about two minutes to get to the house.
When officers arrived and knocked on the front door, Scott said, someone inside opened the door. The officers saw Paul Pelosi and
DePape, “each with one hand on a single hammer,” he said.
After officers ordered both men to drop the hammer, DePape “immediately” pulled the tool from Pelosi and “violently attacked him with the hammer,” Scott said.
Police tackled the assailant, grabbed the hammer and took him into custody before calling for backup and beginning first aid.
A source who was briefed on the attack said the assailant confronted Paul Pelosi and shouted, “Where is Nancy? Where is Nancy?” before the assault occurred.
DePape was booked on suspicion of attempted murder, first-degree burglary, assault with a deadly weapon, threatening a family member of a public official, elder abuse, battery with serious bodily injury, dissuading a witness and injuring a wireless device.
Paul Pelosi, 82, is recovering from surgery at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital “to repair a skull fracture and serious injuries to his right arm and hands,” said Drew Hammill, a spokesperson for Nancy Pelosi’s office. He is expected to recover fully.
An L.A. Times review of his online accounts shows DePape had been drifting further into the world of far-right conspiracies, antisemitism and hate.
In a personal blog that DePape maintained, posts include such topics as “Manipulation of History,” “Holohoax” and “It’s OK to be white” and contained rants about technology, aliens, communists, religious minorities and global elites. He mentioned 4chan, a favorite message board of the far right. He posted videos about conspiracies involving COVID-19 vaccines and the war in Ukraine being a ploy for Jewish people to buy land.
DePape’s screeds included posts about QAnon, an unfounded theory that former President Donald Trump is at war with a cabal of Satan-worshipping elites, baby-eating cannibals and “deep state” officials who run a child sex ring and control the world, as well as posts questioning the 2020 election.
DePape grew up in Powell River, British Columbia, before leaving about 20 years ago to follow an older girlfriend to San Francisco. A street address listed for DePape in the Bay Area college town of Berkeley led to a post office box at a UPS Store.
His stepfather, Gene DePape, said DePape and the girlfriend had two children together and that his stepson also has a child with a different woman.
DePape was known in Berkeley as a pro-nudity activist who had picketed naked at protests against local ordinances requiring people to be clothed in public.