Senate staff turn to faith, not politics after a stabbing of DC brutal

Phillip Todd, bloody lying on a public street, needed someone to pray for him.

The 26 -year -old Senate staff had just been attacked in an act of random violence, one of the many who were brutally engraved in 2023 in Washington, DC at the time, he was full of fear and needed a hand for superior power.

This superior power, as it turned out, was channeled by the paramedical working to keep it alive.

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Phillip Todd considers the act of random violence that left him bleeding with multiple stab wounds as a chance to speak of his faith, not to use it as a political tool. (Phillip Todd)

“The first thing I thought was:” Well, I need to pray. Maybe I can’t pray myself, but someone has to pray for it “, Todd told Fox News Digital. “So, I asked the paramedic to pray for me. And he said,” Are you a Christian? Like, what are you? “And I said:” Yeah, I am a Christian. “”

“He says,” Well, I’m an atheist, “continued Todd.” And I said, “It’s good. You can pray for me.” He was kind and forced. “”

The street incident h in Washington, DC, could have been the perfect flash point for a political agent looking for an anecdote on crime in the district – to be used as a waste against democratic policies of the national capital.

Todd worked for Senator Rand Paul, R-Ky., And was attacked in broad daylight in the middle of one of the worst crime years that Washington had known in the past three decades.

After all, it was millimeters to become a statistic. He was stabbed at least four times, the knife picking up his skull, almost separating his ear, plunging through his diaphragm and dangerously getting closer to his heart.

Even now, in the midst of a hyper-political thrust of the Trump administration to repress the crime to DC which stimulated accusations of authoritarianism of the Democrats and distinctions of the Republicans, Todd, who still works on the hill, has kept politics and what happened to him.

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But that does not mean that he did not fight with this balance in the years that followed. An self -proclaimed “political creature”, Todd said that political thoughts of the way his story could be used to shed light on Washington crime had rebounded in his head.

However, his goal focused on the deeper connection he found with his faith, a journey on which he already made when his attacker, Glynn Neal, attacked him unexpectedly.

“History for me, or the obligation for me, is to focus on the goodness of God, to focus on obedience to God and to manage this story,” he said. “Perhaps politics arrives later, but I think it seems to me that there are two types of obligations that anyone is going through something like that, and I think there is a personal obligation, there is a societal obligation.”

However, Washington legislators and residents are made with President Donald Trump’s decision to federate the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and flood the district streets with the Federal police and the National Guard in order to repress the crime.

When asked what he thought of the troops walking in the streets, Todd said that he was not sure of the right solution to the crime in the district, but that he thinks “that it is a problem to solve”.

“I think what I said to some of my friends, I don’t know if city troops are the best way to do so,” said Todd. “Maybe it may not be. But I think the attitude of trying to solve this problem is something that people need, and it’s worth it.”

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President Donald Trump talks to members of soldiers of the law application and the National Guard on August 21, 2025 in Washington, DC (Jacquelyn Martin / AP Photo)

One of the most striking things about Todd is his ability to make jokes on a knife plunging in his skull and piercing the membrane that surrounds his brain.

Now he has a titanium plate that has said more of the conviction of his friends that he is hard-it also does not trigger metal detectors at the airport, he noted.

However, the fact that he underwent a traumatic situation in the hands of Neal, who had been released from prison just a few days before the attack after having served more than a decade behind bars and was considered mentally incompetent to be legal in June, did not lose for him either.

But it was his decision to forgive Neal very early while recovering in his hospital bed, a choice he wondered if he would have made if his faculties were there. Nevertheless, it was the one he held next to it and credited his ability to look at the situation lightly.

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“I think that the opportunity for redemption in this particular story, it seems to me, and perhaps it changes over time, does not necessarily put in politics but lies more about the fact that it was a very blatant crime,” he said. “It’s a very big evil that made me.”

“It would be quite understandable to have a lot of desire to see reprisals,” continued Todd. “And yet instill in these moments – because God had offered me the ability to forgive, and God had saved me from death – showing how obedience to God can also lead others to a life full of meaning, satisfaction and redemption and difficult trials and situations.”