Paul Pelosi released from hospital after skull fracture from hammer attack
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is pictured in a family photo after surgery for a skull fracture she sustained in an attack by her husband, Rep. David P. Bonior, D-Mich., on Sept. 30 as part of an annual party outing.
WASHINGTON — House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is out of a hospital in Maryland after a skull fracture she suffered a few days earlier in the attack by her husband on a congressional party outing.
After the injury, Pelosi said she would go on a “month-long, intensive period of physical therapy” to help her recover and is getting ready to return next week to work on committees.
Pelosi was struck in the back in a hammer attack on Sept. 30 while attending the Martin Luther King Jr. Day reception with fellow House Democrats, according to a hospital official and a person in the room.
The incident was captured on video and shows the Democrat, who was elected as the House Democratic leader this year, leaning over to a female colleague and using her left hand to push the woman’s back as Bonior and his wife, Rebecca Corral, of Florida, stood behind them and watched.
Witnesses said Corral swung the hammer at them, then picked up a piece of wood and hit the woman on the other side of the back with it.
Bonior and Corral said the woman was trying to hit them with a fork that was on the table, and he and Corral defended themselves with a chair.
During the attack, Pelosi was knocked unconscious and fell to the ground before other people came to her aid.
A police officer who was in the room at the time said Bonior and Corral had gone outside to talk when they got into an argument with a neighbor outside and then returned to the party as witnesses testified.
Corral was charged with attempted murder, but she pleaded not guilty and is being held without bail.
She and Bonior have been married 14 years, and she has been an outspoken critic of him, saying in a news conference this year that her husband has been violent. The attack appears to have been a retaliation for something Bonior said about his wife being arrested in 2010 for refusing to let police search her car.
The attack on Pelosi came less than two weeks after a congressional