- Saturday, March 01, 2025
The accused, Sai Varshith Kandula, was arrested by US Park Police after he crashed the vehicle into the security barriers on the north side of Lafayette Park on Monday night.
By: India Weekly Staff
A 19-year-old Indian-origin boy, who has been accused of deliberately crashing a rented U-Haul truck into a barrier of the White House, has told authorities that he wanted to get inside the mansion to “seize power” and “kill” president Joe Biden, according to local media reports.
The accused, Sai Varshith Kandula, was arrested by US Park Police after he crashed the vehicle into the security barriers on the north side of Lafayette Park shortly before 10 pm local time on Monday (22), seeing several pedestrians running from the scene, The Washington Times reported.
A person named Sai Varshith Kandula has been arrested for threatening to kill the US president, vice president & their family members after ramming a truck into bollards outside a park near the White House.
Times Now, Republic, Aaj Tak, NDTV & others would’ve found his Indian… pic.twitter.com/6UlNYosuKq
— Jas Oberoi | ਜੱਸ ਓਬਰੌਏ (@iJasOberoi) May 23, 2023
The crash took place at a good distance from the White House gates, but the incident prompted road and sidewalk closures, and the nearby Hay-Adams hotel had to be evacuated.
No one was injured in the incident.
Kandula, of Chesterfield, Missouri, rented the truck on Monday night immediately after flying from St Louis to Dulles International Airport on a one-way ticket, a Secret Service agent said in a statement of facts filed in federal district court in Washington DC, NBC News reported.
He drove the vehicle onto a sidewalk outside the White House and into a metal barrier just north of the White House, according to the document.
Kandula put the truck in reverse and crashed into the barrier a second time before the US Park Police officers took him into custody, according to the document. Kandula told authorities he had been planning the attack for six months and detailed the plans in a “green book,” the document says.
He “stated his goal was to ‘get into the White House, seize power, and be put in charge of the nation,'” the document states.
“When agents asked how he would seize power, Kandula stated he would ‘kill the President if that’s what I have to do and would hurt anyone that would stand in my way.'”
The document was included with a criminal complaint charging Kandula with depredation of property of the United States over $1,000 (£805), the NBC News report said.
When Secret Service agents asked Kandula about a flag with a swastika he removed from a backpack, he allegedly said he’d bought it online because Nazis “have a great history,” according to the court document.
He allegedly said he “admires their ‘authoritarian nature, Eugenics, and their one world order,'” according to the document. Kandula identified Hitler as a “strong leader” he admires, the report said.
In the St. Louis suburb of Chesterfield, where Kandula lives, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents were seen entering and leaving his home Tuesday (23) and acquaintances struggled to link the alleged attack with the “chill” teen they know.
Police in Chesterfield have no records of any interaction with Kandula or calls for service to the family home, Capt Daniel Dunn, Commander for the City of Chesterfield’s Bureau of Criminal Investigations, said. Dunn said that federal agents are in charge of the investigation.
Errion Barfield, who was on the Marquette High School track team with Kandula, remembered him as quiet and unassuming. “He was nice and chill,” Barfield said in a Facebook message to NBC News. “Ain’t ever expected him to do something like that.”
Kandula was a member of the sizable South Asian population of Chesterfield, a middle-class suburb about 32 kilometres west of St. Louis. Pranav Nagila, who was a year ahead of Kandula, said he couldn’t make sense of his one-time schoolmate possibly having a Nazi flag in his possession.
“I didn’t see him as off-putting or anything like that,” said Nagila, who just finished his sophomore year at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “He just seemed like a chill person.”
Kandula appeared in Washington DC Superior Court on Tuesday and is expected to make an initial appearance in federal court Wednesday afternoon. A friend of Kandula told New York Post newspaper that he’s worried about his state of mind. The former classmate, who attended school with Kandula said, “I feel like something … either has gone badly internally inside him or maybe between the family.” Kandula was “the quiet kid” who enjoyed tennis, according to Aniket Sharma.
“He was never open to talking. And anytime I tried, he, it was just only small talk – never really anything deep. I always thought he was like a quiet, shy kid,” Sharma said. Sharma, now a Missouri college student, rejected the notion Kandula was a white supremacist or a neo-Nazi.
(PTI)
