He had arrived in Washington with a one-way ticket. Sai Varshith Kandula, 19 years old, had flown that afternoon from St. Louis to Dulles International Airport, taken a taxi to Herndon, Virginia, and rented a 26-foot U-Haul truck. At 9:35 p.m. on May 22, 2023, he drove the truck north up 16th Street, through Black Lives Matter Plaza, and rammed it into the steel bollards that block traffic from reaching Lafayette Square. The truck recoiled. He backed it up and rammed the barriers again. Then he climbed out, opened the back of the truck, and unfurled a red flag with a black Nazi swastika at its center. When Secret Service agents tackled him to the ground, he told them his goal was to get to the White House, seize power, and be put in charge of the nation. He was a year out of high school.
Lafayette Square sits seven acres north of the White House across Pennsylvania Avenue. Since 1995, when the Oklahoma City bombing led the Treasury Department to close Pennsylvania Avenue to vehicle traffic in front of the residence, the square has been ringed by retractable steel bollards. The bollards on the north side, at the intersection of 16th and H Streets - the corner that was renamed Black Lives Matter Plaza after the 2020 racial justice protests - are designed specifically to stop a heavy truck moving at high speed. They worked. The U-Haul came to a stop almost instantly after the first impact. The hood crumpled. The engine compartment began to smoke. The undercarriage leaked fluid onto the asphalt. A bystander on the sidewalk watched the driver climb out, reach into the back of the truck, and remove a swastika flag and a backpack. The bystander called 911 at 9:38 p.m. Secret Service officers were already moving in. By 9:40 p.m., D.C. Fire and EMS units were rolling. The Hay-Adams Hotel a block away was evacuated as a precaution and not cleared until 1:00 a.m.
The bomb robot opened the cargo bay of the U-Haul a few hours later. Inside was a single hand truck. No explosives. No additional weapons. The threat had been the vehicle itself. Sai Varshith Kandula had been born in 2003 or 2004 in Chanda Nagar, in the Telangana state of southern India, and had been brought to the United States as a child. His family settled in Chesterfield, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. He graduated early - in January 2022 - from Marquette High School, where he had been a member of student council and the boys' tennis team. A friend and former track teammate, Errion Barfield, said later that Kandula wouldn't hurt a fly but would do strange things like wear a surgical mask with Joe Biden's name on it just to provoke a reaction. He had told classmates he wanted to major in computer science. According to the FBI affidavit filed after his arrest, Kandula admired the Nazis specifically for what he called their authoritarian nature, eugenics, and their one world order, and he looked up to Adolf Hitler. He told investigators he had planned the attack as the first step in a series of strikes designed to put him in charge of the United States. He was not a U.S. citizen. He held a green card.
The attack drew immediate political reaction, much of it surreal. Donald Trump Jr. suggested on Twitter within hours that the attack might be a false flag operation, and after Kandula's name became public, added that if the threat of white supremacy was so real, why did they have to outsource all the hate. Other verified Twitter accounts spread theories connecting the truck crash to a separate news item about a missing 30-ton shipment of ammonium nitrate from a railroad car somewhere in California, and to a Patriot Front march that had moved through the National Mall earlier that month. President Biden was briefed and issued a brief statement that he was relieved no one was injured and grateful to the agents who responded. Federal prosecutors charged Kandula with assault with a dangerous weapon, threatening to kill or kidnap the President or Vice President, destruction of federal property, and trespassing. The FBI's Evidence Response Team searched his parents' home in Missouri the next day.
On May 13, 2024, Kandula pleaded guilty to a single felony charge of depredation of government property, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years. The plea agreement reduced the rest of the charges to a single count and recommended an eight-year sentence. His defense attorney told the court that two psychologists had since diagnosed Kandula with schizophrenia and that he was now under medication. A psychiatric specialist was prepared to testify at sentencing. On January 16, 2025, Judge Dabney Friedrich of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia accepted the recommendation and imposed an eight-year sentence followed by three years of supervised release, plus nearly $57,000 in restitution for the destruction to the bollards and adjacent equipment. Kandula was transferred to FCI Allenwood Low in Pennsylvania to serve his term. The bollards at the north end of Black Lives Matter Plaza were replaced. They look the same as the ones before. They are designed to stop the next truck.
Lafayette Square sits at 38.90 degrees N, 77.04 degrees W in central Washington, D.C., immediately north of the White House across Pennsylvania Avenue. The square is inside Prohibited Area P-56A; all aircraft are barred without specific FAA approval. Reagan National (KDCA) is four miles south. The entire area lies inside the Washington Special Flight Rules Area, which extends 30 nautical miles from DCA. Coordinate with Potomac TRACON before any low operations within the SFRA. Aerial approach to the White House and Lafayette Square is impossible by design.