Man pleads guilty to attempted murder in attack on Pennsylvania governor

HARRISBURG, Pa. (CN) — A Harrisburg-area manpleaded guilty Tuesday to attempting to murder Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro in the April firebombing of the governor’s residence.

Cody Balmer, 38, wassentenced to 25 to 50 years in a state prison under a plea deal accepted by Judge Deborah Curcillo. He also pleaded guilty in Dauphin County Common Pleas Court to 22 counts of arson — one for each of the people endangered by the fire; burglary; terrorism; and other charges related to the attack. He was also ordered to pay $100,000 in restitution.

Under the agreement, he is not eligible for parole until 2050; if paroled, he would remain under supervision until 2075.

Shapiro, First Lady Lori Shapiro, three of their children, 15 overnight guests and two state troopers were inside the governor’s residence when Balmer broke in. The family was asleep on the opposite side of the building and had to be evacuated, after celebrating the Jewish holiday of Passover the evening before. No one was injured in the attack.

Balmer admitted in a call to 911 operators that onApril 13, he broke into the governor’s mansion and threw two Molotov cocktails — Heineken bottles filled with gasoline.

On Tuesday, Shapiro expressed his gratitude for closure on the attack and his full support of Balmer’s plea deal.

“We will forever be changed by this, we know that time will heal but the scars will remain,” Shapiro said at a news conference in Harrisburg.

“It’s especially hard to know that he tried to burn our family to death while we slept,” the Democratic governor said. “To be honest, Lori and I have struggled over the last six months to try and make sense of all of this, and the hardest part has been trying to explain it to our four children, to our nieces and nephews. I’ve carried with me this enormous sense of guilt, guilt that doing this job that I love so much has put our children’s lives at risk.”

Balmer was captured on video scaling a fence to enter the property around 2 a.m. Sunday. He used a sledgehammer to shatter a window on the residence’s south side, threw a Molotov cocktail, then broke another window, crawled in and lit two more fires before escaping through a fire exit. He later turned himself in.

Balmer told state troopers after his arrest in April that he would have beaten the governor with a hammer if he’d found him.

Balmer told 911 dispatchers the governor “needs to know that Cody Balmer will not take part in his plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people.” Shapiro has said he supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Shapiro said his children have expressed concern at how Balmer was able to get so far into the governor’s residence, “the place that was supposed to be the safest place we could possibly be.”

“He was able to penetrate the residence right up to a door that led to the hallway where we were in our private living quarters,” Shapiro said.

The governor said security upgrades following the attack have affected all aspects of his and his family’s lives.

“Now, when we walk through the residence, we often think about the steps he took and where he roamed, those double doors that lead to my office and Lori’s office and where we sleep, those doors that he tried to break through, that metal hammer that he wielded, that apparently he wanted to use to kill me with,” Shapiro said.

Shapiro’s Jewish faith and the attack during the Passover weekend raised questions about Balmer’s motivation, but Balmer told The Associated Press in a May letter from jail that had not been a factor in his actions.

“He can be Jewish, Muslim, or a purple people eater for all I care and as long as he leaves me and mine alone,” Balmer wrote.

After his arrest, Balmer’s mother said she had tried to get him assistance for mental health trouble, but “nobody would help.” Court proceedings were delayed while he received treatment, according to his lawyer.

At a court hearing days after the fire, Balmer told a judge he was an unemployed welder with no income or savings and “a lot of children.”

The fire causedsubstantial damage to a portion of the residence. Taxpayers have paid more than$6 million for arson-related repairs and security upgrades for the governor’s home, which didn’t have sprinklers.

Shapiro noted Tuesday that his faith has helped him begin to process the violent attack and that he is not deterred from his work.

“Lori and I are mindful that serving in public office today brings with it risks,” Shapiro said. “It’s a sad state of the world that we are in, but I have to tell you that before this attack, those risks just felt very theoretical to me, something that might happen elsewhere to someone else, but couldn’t happen here. Sadly, this made it all real, and it brings with it a real sense of vulnerability that our family feels every single day.”