▶ Watch Video: Suspect in Pelosi hammer attack pleads not guilty
The break-in at the home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband, Paul Pelosi, was captured by security cameras outside the house, but Capitol Police only learned of the break-in after an officer in the department’s command center saw a police cruiser in the couple’s driveway and alerted his superiors, sources told CBS News on Tuesday.
No security alarm went off during the break-in, CBS News also learned, even after the suspect broke the glass of a rear door to the house. The speaker’s security is provided by Capitol Police, who were with her in Washington, D.C., when the attack occurred.
The revelation about the security cameras was first reported by The Washington Post.
In the break-in, police say Paul Pelosi was attacked by a hammer-wielding assailant. The suspect, David Wayne DePape, pleaded not guilty to several charges, including attempted murder, in a California court on Tuesday. Pelosi is recovering at a San Francisco hospital. The Justice Department has also filed federal charges against DePape.
According to court filings, DePape broke into the Pelosi home in San Francisco, where he encountered Paul Pelosi, whom DePape allegedly assaulted with a hammer, court documents said. The FBI affidavit filed in the federal case against DePape also said that the San Francisco police “recovered zip ties in Pelosi’s bedroom and in the hallway near the front door of the Pelosi residence.”
San Francisco police said that he told them that, “If Nancy [Pelosi] were to tell DePape the ‘truth,’ he would let her go, and if she ‘lied,’ he was going to break ‘her kneecaps,'” so that she would have to be wheeled into Congress, the court documents said.
According to other court documents filed Tuesday and obtained by The Associated Press, while at the scene of the attack, the suspect told officers that he was sick of the “lies coming out of Washington D.C.”
“I didn’t really want to hurt him, but you know this was a suicide mission,” the suspect allegedly told officers, per the court documents obtained by AP. “I’m not going to stand here and do nothing even if it cost me my life.”
Law enforcement sources told CBS News on Sunday that DePape had a list of potential other targets, and the AP reported that court documents revealed that DePape allegedly told first responders those targets included local professor, as well as several prominent state and federal politicians and members of their families. The filing did not name any potential targets.
Michael Kaplan, Kathryn Watson, Caroline Linton and Faris Tanyos contributed to this report.
