Paul Pelosi attacker David DePape lived in a school bus
The man accused of attacking Paul Pelosi with a hammer had 🦂been living in a school bus weeks before the attack, neighbors said.
Those who know David DePape, 42, told The Post they’ve seen him living in a yellow school bus parked in front of the Berkeley home of his ex, San Francisco pro-nudist activist Gypsy Taub, with whom he shares three children.
“He usually kept to himself,” neighbor Ryan La Coste told The Post. “He would just give us a blank stare when we would walk by. We tried to stay clear of him. … No one knew he was here because he would be on the bus or he just didn’t communicate.”
La Coste said he “wasn’t surprised at all” when he learned his former neighbor was involved in the brazen attack on Pelosi.
“I wasn’t surprised because another crazy story is coming from someone in that house,” La Coste said. “They are always toxic and always up to something. They are always on the news and trying to be ‘activists.’ They always want to be in the spotlight.”
DePape is facing attempted murder and other charges after he allegedly broke into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco home and beat her 82-year-old husband with a hammer while yelling, “Where’s Nancy?” The House Speaker was in Washington, D.C. at the time.
DePape’s neighbors, Margarita and Julio Gonzalez, said he used to live in the Victorian home with Taub and the children but at some point, began staying off-and-on in the two dilapidated school buses on the property.
“He is homeless … but I never seen him being violent,” Margarita Gonzalez told The Post. “He never had work. In the beginning when he lived with (Taub), he just stayed inside the home and she was the one who did the shopping and everything.”
When she heard about Pelosi’s attack, Margarita said she also was shocked her neighbor had been accused.
“I was surprised because I never saw him aggressive,” Margarita Gonzalez said. “I don’t think [the attack on Pelosi] was something personal. … Maybe there’s a mental problem with him.”
DePape’s stepdaughter with Taub, Inti Gonzalez, identified him as her “father” in a Facebook post and wrote he’d made made several racist posts on his personal blog, including conspiracy theories about the 2020 election results.
Gonzalez also accused DePape of sexually abusing he📖r and♋ her brothers. She directed a reporter to her socia✤l media post when reached for comment.
“Six months later Nebosvod, the middle brother, started getting memories of David physically and sexually abusing me and my brothers, which started when we were very young and continue until around 2008, when I was 7. All this was a surprise for us considering that he was always a quiet person.” Gonzalez claimed. “I love my father. He did genuinely try to be a good person but the monster in him was always too strong for him to be safe to be around. He grew up in an intensely abusive home.”
“This attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband came as a shock to me, though not much considering the kind of extreme abuse he had inflicted on me and my brothers,” Gonzalez said in her statement. “I didn’t see this coming and there was no sign of the possibility from his end.
“Though I did not agree with all of his views, it made me happy to see that he had strong opinions about important issues that our world is facing today. He wanted to make a difference. He wanted to make the world a better place and to have his voice be heard. … There is some part of him that is a good person even though he has been consumed by darkness.”
A blog identified by Gonzalez as DePape’s features anti-Semitic messages, including one post titled “Faking of Adolf Hitler for History.” In an Aug. 24 entry, someone identified as “daviddepape” posted a collection of memes and conspiracy theories that the country was run by a deep state cabal.
DePape lived with his stepfather, Gene, in Canada until he was 14 but the pair has been estranged for about a decade, said the elder man, who called the accused “a quiet boy.”
“David was never violent that I seen and was never in any troꦡuble although he was very reclusive and played too much video games,” Gene DePape said.
