BS BULLETIN
- New court-record reporting says Abdulloi Toshpulodzoda told police “I am guilty” after the 2019 killing of his landlord.
- In 2024, Fairfax prosecutors joined his defense in requesting an escorted trip to the Tajikistan Embassy to obtain a passport.
- After a judge refused to release him permanently this year, the state hospital still granted an unaccompanied 48-hour pass. He flew to Tajikistan.
Just when you thought the story of a Virginia insanity acquittee flying out of the United States during a 48-hour mental-hospital pass couldn’t become more outrageous, new reporting based on court records has supplied an answer:
Oh, yes it could.
Abdulloi Toshpulodzoda, the Tajik national found not guilty by reason of insanity in the 2019 killing of his landlord, Mohammad Hemmatian, didn’t merely possess a passport when he disappeared from Northern Virginia Mental Health Institute last month.
The Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office had previously joined his defense attorney in asking a judge to permit an escorted visit to the Tajikistan Embassy so he could obtain one.
And according to the prosecutor’s office, that passport was sought for “documentary purposes.”
We’ll come back to that.
Luke Rosiak of The Daily Wire dug deeper into the court record Tuesday and uncovered details that significantly expand on the original reports from Fox News and FOX 5 DC.
Toshpulodzoda was charged with murder after the December 2019 killing of Hemmatian, with whom he shared a home in Fairfax County. Contemporary local reporting confirmed police arrested Toshpulodzoda at the scene after Hemmatian suffered fatal injuries.
According to court records reviewed by The Daily Wire, Toshpulodzoda was found “covered in blood from head to toe” and told police: “I am guilty.”
But his mental condition became central to the case. His attorney said Toshpulodzoda was “fixated on religious topics” and behaving irrationally. The attorney also said his brother had taken him to a mosque for “spiritual cleansing” rather than obtaining mental-health treatment. A psychologist was selected to evaluate him in light of what court records described as the “intertwining of Islam” with Toshpulodzoda’s delusions. Another psychologist retained by prosecutors agreed with the insanity assessment.
In October 2022, Toshpulodzoda was found not guilty by reason of insanity with the concurrence of Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano’s office and was committed to state psychiatric custody. The ruling meant clinicians and the court concluded that his mental illness met Virginia’s legal insanity standard at the time of the killing.
But what happened afterward is where this story becomes almost impossible to believe. In May 2024, according to court records obtained by The Daily Wire, Descano’s office and Toshpulodzoda’s attorney jointly asked a judge for permission for an escorted visit to the Tajikistan Embassy in Washington.
The purpose? “To obtain a passport.”
The passport request becomes rather more consequential when you know what happened two years later. But before we get there, there was another battle over whether Toshpulodzoda should be released from inpatient custody. In 2025, a forensic review panel concluded that he was an appropriate candidate for conditional release, according to The Daily Wire’s review of court records.
Descano’s office says it opposed releasing him. And a judge ultimately agreed.
The court concluded this summer that Toshpulodzoda remained mentally ill and required inpatient hospitalization. The Daily Wire reports the judge ordered that he “shall not be released from custody and inpatient hospitalization without further order of this Court.”
The court found that Toshpulodzoda “remained mentally ill and in need of inpatient hospitalization.”
So the judge wouldn’t approve permanent release. You might reasonably think that would mean Toshpulodzoda remained inside the hospital. You would be wrong.
The Northern Virginia Mental Health Institute subsequently authorized an “unaccompanied community visit” of up to 48 hours — a type of privilege that, according to the new reporting, he had been permitted to receive since 2024. Prosecutors maintain that such passes were controlled by the mental-health system and did not conflict with the judge’s order denying permanent release. On July 6, Toshpulodzoda left NVMHI on one of those passes. His destination was supposed to be an apartment made available through the Fairfax Permanent Supportive Housing Program, according to court documents.
Fairfax County was paying for the apartment, The Daily Wire reports. Toshpulodzoda had other plans. He traveled to Washington Dulles International Airport. He boarded Turkish Airlines. He flew to Istanbul. Then he continued to Dushanbe, Tajikistan.
And the passport that helped make an international trip possible? The prosecutor’s office had helped him obtain it.
Descano’s chief of staff, Laura Birnbaum, told The Daily Wire the office supported obtaining the passport “for documentary purposes.” She emphasized that the insanity ruling itself was made by a judge following reviews by multiple independent clinicians.
The office also says it had opposed Toshpulodzoda’s permanent release because of community-safety concerns. “We have opposed his release specifically because of community concerns,” Birnbaum said.
According to The Daily Wire, the judge considering Toshpulodzoda’s release was concerned about what would happen if he were deported. Court records cited by the outlet said the “Acquittee will not receive treatment if deported.”
So let’s appreciate the absurdity of where the system ultimately landed.
Officials worried that deportation might result in Toshpulodzoda being outside America without adequate treatment.
The system instead kept him in America, helped him obtain a Tajik passport, permitted unsupervised community visits — and he eventually put himself outside America without adequate supervision.
You could not workshop a more spectacular bureaucratic own-goal.
After Toshpulodzoda disappeared, authorities placed him on escape status. Virginia State Police and federal officials were notified, Customs and Border Protection issued an alert, and a bench warrant was issued. Descano’s office has also sought a judicial capias so Toshpulodzoda can be arrested if he appears at a U.S. port of entry or is otherwise located inside the country.
Fairfax County taxpayers — and certainly Mohammad Hemmatian’s family — are entitled to ask what documentary purpose justified the risk, what safeguards accompanied the decision and whether anybody contemplated the fairly obvious possibility that a foreign national possessing a valid foreign passport could use it to leave the country.
Because he did.
DBS WIRE SOURCES:
- The Daily Wire — Islamist immigrant murderer allowed to flee country, was given ‘48-hour’ leave from mental hospital
- Fox News — Virginia man acquitted by insanity in killing flees US during 48-hour mental hospital pass
- Townhall — Virginia’s Fairfax County allowed an illegal alien Islamist murderer to flee the country
- WTOP — Stabbing death in Vienna is Fairfax County’s 13th of 2019
- Patch — Man charged with murder after Oakton stabbing: Police
