A 26-year-old from a wealthy Ohio family pleaded guilty to smashing windows at Vice President JD Vance's $1.4 million Cincinnati home with a hammer, and now faces up to ten years in federal prison.
William D. DeFoor entered the guilty plea on two federal counts: engaging in acts of physical violence against government officials and causing willful injury to property of the United States. The charges stem from a January 5 incident in which DeFoor ran along the front fence of Vance's home in the early morning hours, struck the driver's side window of an unmarked Secret Service vehicle multiple times with a hammer, and then turned the hammer on the windows of the residence itself.
Vance and his family were in Washington, D.C., at the time. Secret Service agents on site ordered DeFoor to drop his weapon. He refused. Agents apprehended him at the scene.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in Ohio announced the plea, and prosecutors said DeFoor caused roughly $28,000 in damage to government-owned property and security equipment. Fox News reported the damage included smashed windows on both the home and the federal vehicle. DeFoor has remained in detention since his arrest after a federal judge denied his request to await trial at his parents' home.
A sentencing hearing has not yet been scheduled. DeFoor faces up to ten years behind bars.
DeFoor did not come to the attention of law enforcement for the first time on January 5. His record shows a pattern of escalating incidents, and a system that repeatedly returned him to the community.
In 2023, DeFoor was charged with trespassing at the University of Cincinnati Health Psychiatric Emergency Services. A court ruled him incompetent to stand trial, and the case was dismissed. In 2024, he picked up two counts of vandalism after breaking windows at a local business. A court ordered treatment, and DeFoor spent time in a locked-door mental health facility. His mother, Catherine DeFoor, was granted legal guardianship after he was found incompetent by reason of mental illness.
Defense attorneys said DeFoor managed his symptoms for a stretch after the 2024 arrest and even began working toward a bachelor's degree. But his symptoms returned in December, and weeks later he showed up at the vice president's home armed with a hammer.
When DeFoor initially appeared in federal court, he pleaded not guilty to three federal charges, including assaulting or resisting federal officers, a count that carried up to 20 years in prison. The guilty plea announced this week covered two charges, not three. Whether the third count was dropped as part of a plea agreement is not clear from available court records.
DeFoor's attorneys have argued from the start that the attack had nothing to do with politics. They cited his schizophrenia diagnosis and framed the incident as a medical emergency, not an act of political violence. Prosecutors, for their part, acknowledged they found no evidence the attack was politically motivated.
In a motion seeking DeFoor's release, his defense team put it this way:
"Mr DeFoor's alleged offense conduct was using a hammer to damage two windows and a car and refusing to listen to the orders of Secret Service Agents. Put more succinctly, while in the midst of an ongoing mental health crisis, a young person damaged property and did not listen to someone shouting at him."
They added that the circumstances were "only noteworthy for one reason; it just so happens that this occurred at the home of the Vice President." In a separate filing, the defense called DeFoor "not the behavior of an inherently violent person, merely a person in crisis."
That framing is worth testing against the facts. DeFoor ignored armed federal agents ordering him to stop. He swung a hammer at a Secret Service vehicle. He smashed the windows of a home protected by the federal government. Whatever his mental state, the conduct met the legal threshold for two serious federal charges, charges he has now admitted to.
Catherine DeFoor, William's mother, issued a statement in January acknowledging the severity of her son's illness:
"It is a struggle which can take over the life of a beautiful person and the people who love and support them. Unfortunately for our child, it has taken over his life in a way that we can never have imagined."
DeFoor grew up in Cincinnati's Hyde Park neighborhood, in a home valued at $1.3 million. His father, William DeFoor Sr., is a pediatric urologist at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. His mother practices as a general pediatrician at a St. Elizabeth Physicians primary care facility in Kentucky. DeFoor attended The Summit Country Day School, an elite Catholic institution with annual tuition of $27,000.
He does not appear to have graduated from a traditional four-year university. The Daily Mail previously reported that DeFoor appeared to have transitioned to female, going by the name Julia, and that a Facebook profile under the name "Julia DeFoor" was created approximately one month before the January 5 incident.
Newsmax reported that DeFoor shattered 14 historic window panes and damaged security enhancements during the attack. The property sits in Cincinnati's East Walnut Hills neighborhood, a detail that underscores how close DeFoor came to a home under active federal protection.
U.S. Attorney Dominick S. Gerace II did not mince words in his statement after the guilty plea. The New York Post quoted Gerace saying:
"Acts of violence directed against our political leaders, their families or property, have no place in our society and will not be tolerated. Our elected leaders, at all levels of government, must be permitted to carry out their duties free from threats, vandalism, and other forms of violence."
Gerace added that "perpetrators like DeFoor, who put that freedom at risk, particularly through violent, destructive actions, will, like here, be vigorously prosecuted."
Judge Douglas R. Cole's decision to keep DeFoor in custody, rejecting the defense request to release him to his parents' home, suggests the court weighed the pattern of prior incidents and found the risk too high. Two dismissed or diverted cases, followed by an attack on the vice president's residence, is not a record that inspires confidence in outpatient supervision.
Several facts remain unclear. The terms of any plea agreement have not been made public. Whether the third charge, assaulting or resisting federal officers, which carried up to 20 years, was formally dropped, and on what conditions, is unknown. The sentencing date has not been set.
DeFoor's defense will almost certainly lean heavily on his schizophrenia diagnosis at sentencing. His attorneys have already laid the groundwork, casting every prior incident as a product of illness rather than intent. Prosecutors have not disputed the diagnosis, but they have made clear that the conduct itself, swinging a hammer at a federal vehicle and the home of the vice president, crosses a line the justice system must enforce.
Mental illness is real, and schizophrenia is devastating. But a system that twice returned this man to the community after violent or disruptive episodes, only to watch him escalate to an attack on a federally protected residence, did not protect him or the public. Accountability at sentencing is the bare minimum.
