The man accused in the attack of Paul Pelosi, the husband of the former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, made a disturbing surprise phone call to a California television station on Friday and said that he had no remorse about his actions last October. He suggested that he regretted not causing more harm.
The man, David DePape, who has been charged in the attack against Mr. Pelosi, called a reporter for
KTVU from his San Francisco County Jail cell on Friday and said that he was only “sorry I didn’t get more of them.” The station is a Fox affiliate in the Bay Area.
His remarks to the reporter, Amber Lee, who said on-air that the statements sounded scripted, came on the same day that a San Francisco court
released police body camera footage showing the frenzied moment of the attack. The call to Ms. Lee was unexpected, the station reported, but Ms. Lee had previously reached out to him following his arrest last year.
The body camera footage shows that when officers approached the couple’s San Francisco home in the early hours of Oct. 28, they found the assailant and Mr. Pelosi standing calmly, each with a hand on a large hammer.
After officers demanded that the hammer be dropped, Mr. DePape wrested control of it, raised it above his head and slammed it into Mr. Pelosi’s skull.
It was an extraordinary depiction of a brutal act of political violence, which stemmed from an attempt to abduct Ms. Pelosi, who at the time was second in line to the presidency. Mr. Pelosi
spent six days in a San Francisco hospital and underwent surgery for a skull fracture.
