Abdulloi Toshpulodzoda confessed to stabbing his roommate and landlord Mohammed Hemmatian to death in Vienna, Virginia in 2019. Police found him, in their words, "covered in blood from head to toe." He told them directly: "I am guilty."
Three years later, a Fairfax County Circuit Court found him not guilty by reason of insanity. And on July 6, 2026, the Northern Virginia Mental Health Institute handed him an unsupervised 48-hour pass.
He walked out, drove to Washington Dulles International Airport, boarded a Turkish Airlines flight through Istanbul, and landed in Dushanbe, Tajikistan — his home country. By July 8, when the pass expired and he failed to return, staff classified him as an escapee. An illegal immigrant who killed an American resident, confessed to it, got committed instead of convicted, and then strolled through an international airport while a court order explicitly stated he "shall not be released from custody and inpatient hospitalization without further order."
That court order came from Judge Stephen Shannon of the Fairfax County Circuit Court. As recently as June 11, 2026, the court ruled that Toshpulodzoda remained mentally ill. On June 29, another ruling maintained his commitment. Two weeks before the facility decided a weekend stroll sounded reasonable.
His defense had argued during the original trial that he was "fixated on religious topics and he was illogical and nonsensical." The insanity finding meant no prison sentence. Instead, the state of Virginia assumed custody and responsibility — a responsibility that apparently includes handing a confessed killer his passport and wishing him a nice trip.
The Northern Virginia Mental Health Institute authorized the 48-hour pass on June 25. Nobody flagged that the patient was a foreign national with no legal status in the United States. Nobody flagged the active court order barring release. Nobody, it appears, flagged anything at all.
The facility operates under the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services, or DBHDS. The commissioner is Daryl Washington, appointed by Governor Abigail Spanberger in January 2026. Spanberger, a Democrat, oversees the entire mental health apparatus that made this possible.
Now, the obvious objection from the "systemic reform" crowd will be that mental health facilities need flexibility to grant supervised transitions. Interesting argument to make about an unsupervised pass given to an illegal immigrant with a murder confession, an active commitment order, and a one-way ticket to Central Asia. The flexibility argument works a lot better when the patient doesn't end up in a different hemisphere.
This isn't a paperwork error. A court said he was too dangerous to release. A facility released him anyway. He left the country. The system that was supposed to keep the public safe from a man who butchered his landlord instead gave him a long weekend and access to international air travel.
Mohammed Hemmatian is still dead. His killer is in Tajikistan, a country with no extradition treaty with the United States.
When the court order says "shall not be released" and the facility releases him, the question isn't whether the system failed. It's whether anyone in the system will be asked to explain why they overruled a judge.