A Virginia Hospital Gave a Murder Acquittee a 48-Hour Pass and a Taxpayer-Funded Apartment — He Used Both to Disappear.
- 48 Hours the length of the unescorted community pass a Virginia state mental hospital gave Abdulloi Toshpulodzoda on July 6, 2026 — three weeks after a judge ordered he not be released without further court order — Fox News; The Daily Wire, Aug. 2026
- 2019 the year Toshpulodzoda, found covered in blood and telling police “I am guilty,” fatally stabbed his landlord and roommate, Mohammed Hemmatian, 61, in Vienna, Virginia — The Daily Wire; WTOP News
- 1 Day the gap between Toshpulodzoda's immigration removal order becoming final and the hospital's Forensic Privileging Committee authorizing his unescorted passes — The Daily Wire, court-records reporting
- $8.9 Million the HUD funding Fairfax County received in 2022 for affordable and supportive-housing programs, including the Permanent Supportive Housing Program that gave Toshpulodzoda access to an Alexandria apartment during his passes — Fairfax County Government, 2022
On July 6, 2026, Abdulloi Toshpulodzoda walked out of the Northern Virginia Mental Health Institute in Falls Church on a 48-hour pass. He never checked back in. Instead, according to court-records reporting by The Daily Wire and corroborated by Fox News, he made his way to an Alexandria apartment the county was paying for, then to Dulles International Airport, where he boarded a one-way Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul and on to Dushanbe, Tajikistan.
Toshpulodzoda was not a free man when he left. In 2022, a Fairfax County court found him not guilty by reason of insanity in the 2019 stabbing death of his landlord, Mohammed Hemmatian, 61, and committed him to Virginia’s behavioral-health system indefinitely. Just weeks before his pass, a judge had specifically ordered that he “shall not be released from custody and inpatient hospitalization without further order of this court.” The hospital gave him an unescorted weekend pass anyway.
Taxpayers funded the apartment he stayed in during those passes, through Fairfax County’s Permanent Supportive Housing Program. Taxpayers, in a roundabout way, also funded the passport he used to leave the country — obtained at the Tajikistan Embassy at the request of the office of Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano (D).
Toshpulodzoda, a Tajikistani national, entered the United States legally on December 15, 2009, according to a DHS spokesperson, and later fell out of lawful status. In 2019, he fatally stabbed Hemmatian, his landlord and roommate, in a home in Vienna, Virginia. Police found him covered in blood from head to toe. “I am guilty,” he told them, according to court records cited by The Daily Wire.
A Fairfax Circuit Court disagreed with his own confession as a matter of law. On October 20, 2022, the court found Toshpulodzoda not guilty by reason of insanity of second-degree murder and committed him to the custody of Virginia’s Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services (DBHDS), which placed him at the Northern Virginia Mental Health Institute. Under Virginia law, that verdict makes him a civil “Acquittee,” not a convicted felon — a status Civic Intelligence uses throughout this story, because it is the legally accurate one.
In May 2024, Toshpulodzoda was granted an escorted visit to the Tajikistan Embassy in Washington, D.C. to obtain a passport — at the request of Descano’s office and his own defense counsel, according to The Daily Wire. Descano’s chief of staff, Laura Birnbaum, told the outlet the passport help was “for documentary purposes” and that the office’s “goal is to make sure people are not harmed wherever he ends up.” By September 2025, a DBHDS document listed him as a candidate for conditional release.
The clinical machinery moved in the same direction. Psychologist Sahair Monfared evaluated Toshpulodzoda for DBHDS, and the hospital’s Forensic Review Panel, chaired by Azure Baron, treated him as a candidate for expanding privileges — even after Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Stephen Shannon found in June 2026 that Toshpulodzoda remained mentally ill and ordered he “shall not be released from custody and inpatient hospitalization without further order of this court.”
Fairfax's Commonwealth's Attorney requested the escorted embassy visit that let this murder acquittee obtain the travel documents he later used to flee the country.
On June 24, 2026, an immigration judge issued a final removal order against Toshpulodzoda. The very next day, NVMHI’s Internal Forensic Privileging Committee authorized unaccompanied 48-hour community passes for him. On July 6, he used one. He stayed at the county-funded Alexandria apartment, then traveled to Dulles and boarded a one-way Turkish Airlines flight — reportedly purchased on his own credit card — to Istanbul and on to Dushanbe.
He did not return by the deadline on July 8. NVMHI placed him on escape status and sought a facility warrant. On August 5, the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office filed a motion documenting the escape and seeking a bench warrant enforceable beyond Virginia’s borders. Fox News and The Daily Wire broke the story nationally on August 17 and 18.
The Northern Virginia Mental Health Institute released Toshpulodzoda on a weekend pass despite a court order barring his release. He then got on an international flight and fled the country.
A DHS spokesperson framed Toshpulodzoda’s departure as compliance with his own removal order, even as his flight defied the hospital’s custody terms: “Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S.”
The apartment Toshpulodzoda used came through Fairfax County’s Permanent Supportive Housing Program, which pairs subsidized apartments with behavioral-health services for people with serious mental illness. It runs through the county’s Community Services Board and Department of Housing and Community Development, funded by a mix of federal HUD Continuum of Care grants — Fairfax received an $8.9 million HUD award in 2022 for this kind of housing and services — state funding, and county general funds. The Board of Supervisors that sets the county housing budget is chaired by Jeff McKay (D).
NVMHI itself is a state facility, run by DBHDS. Its commissioner, Daryl Washington, was appointed by Governor Abigail Spanberger (D) on January 5, 2026 and started the job January 17 — the same day Spanberger was sworn in. Washington had previously run the Fairfax-Falls Church Community Services Board, the very body that administers the Permanent Supportive Housing Program. Spanberger separately signed a 2026 executive order restricting state and local cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, reversing a policy set by her Republican predecessor, Glenn Youngkin (R).
Fairfax's CSB and NVMHI acknowledged Toshpulodzoda was an illegal immigrant and murderer, but said it is of the opinion that he is 'an appropriate candidate for conditional release.'
“The biggest problem is the entire Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office under Steve Descano doesn’t care about the public. They care about an ideological agenda,” said Sean Kennedy, president of Virginians for Safe Communities and a Board of Supervisors-appointed member of Fairfax’s Criminal Justice Advisory Board.
This is not the first time Fairfax County’s handling of an accused or convicted illegal immigrant has drawn national attention. On May 14, 2026, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing titled “Fairfax County, Virginia: The Dangerous Consequences of Sanctuary Policies,” where Descano, Sheriff Stacey Kincaid, and former Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) testified before Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH).
Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) pressed Descano directly on why ICE wasn’t notified in similar cases — the same question this case now raises about a state hospital system, not a prosecutor’s office. The full hearing is preserved in the official congressional record.
Toshpulodzoda remains at large. He faces no new criminal charge — only an escape warrant tied to his failure to return from a state hospital pass he should never have received.
Abdulloi Toshpulodzoda was found not guilty by reason of insanity in a 2019 murder and committed to Virginia’s behavioral-health system. A judge ordered in June 2026 that he not be released without further court order. Days later, a state hospital’s privileging committee authorized unescorted 48-hour passes for him anyway — one day after his immigration removal order became final. On July 6, he used a taxpayer-funded apartment under Fairfax County’s Permanent Supportive Housing Program as a staging point to fly out of Dulles on a one-way ticket to Tajikistan, using a passport his own prosecutor’s office, led by Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano (D), had helped him obtain in 2024. The state hospital system is run by DBHDS Commissioner Daryl Washington, a Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) appointee who previously ran the same county board that administers the housing program. He remains at large.
