The man who allegedly set fire to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s official residence on the first night of Passover planned to beat him with a hammer, authorities said in court documents released Monday.
Cody Balmer, 38, of Harrisburg, was arrested and charged with attempted homicide, terrorism, aggravated arson, aggravated assault and other offenses, authorities said.
Balmer told police he had planned to beat the governor with a small sledgehammer after walking an hour from his home to the residence with that in mind, the court documents revealed.
“Balmer admitted to harboring hatred towards Gov. Shapiro,” police said in an affidavit, without giving a motive for the sentiment.
The alleged arsonist was in police custody at a hospital for a medical event “not connected to this incident or his arrest,” authorities said Monday afternoon. Balmer’s mother, Christie Balmer, said she had tried in vain to get help for her son, who suffers from mental illness and “wasn’t taking his medicine.”
Balmer allegedly scaled an iron security fence nearly 7 feet high and dodged officers who noticed the breach. He then broke into the residence and set it on fire with Molotov cocktails fashioned out of gasoline-filled beer bottles in an approximately one-minute-long, meticulously planned attack, Pennsylvania State Police Lt. Col. George Bivens said.
Balmer was caught on security videosurveilling the residence, smashing a window with the hammer and tossing the rudimentary firebombs before fleeing through a fire door, the Dauphin County district attorney’s office said in a statement.
The 51-year-old governor and his family — his wife, four children and two dogs — had celebrated Passover with members of Harrisburg’s Jewish community on Saturday night in the very room where the fire would break out hours later. He, his family and relatives who were staying with them were sound asleep when troopers pounded on their doors to wake and evacuate them at about 2 a.m. Nobody was injured.
Photos showed the trashed room that often holds art displays and large gatherings was a mess of torched furniture, blown-out and charred windows, broken glass, a burnt piano and other damage.
President Trump said Balmer was “probably just a whack job,” while Vice President Vance expressed gratitude that the Shapiros were not harmed and blasted the “really disgusting violence”in a post on X.
The governor, too, decried the uptick in violence, and leaders across the state rallied around him.
“This kind of violence is becoming far too common in our society,” Shapiro said at a news conference. “And I don’t give a damn if it’s coming from one particular side or the other, directed at one particular party or another or one particular person or another. It is not OK, and it has to stop. We have to be better than this.”
Shapiro said he was more determined than ever to serve the people of his state and added a bit of historical context.
“When we were in the state dining room last night, we told the story of Passover,” Shapiro said of the holiday celebrating the exodus of the Jews to freedom from slavery in Egypt. “I refuse to be trapped by the bondage that someone attempts to put on me by attacking us as they did here last night. I refuse to let anyone who had evil intentions like that stop me from doing the work that I love.”
With News Wire Services
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