For Pennsylvania Gov. Shapiro, an arson attack revealed his family’s vulnerability in an age of rising political violence

By Elizabeth Wolfe, CNN

(CNN) — Cody Balmer stood outside an iron fence surrounding the resolute brick mansion, waiting and watching the home where his target slept. In a bag, he had stuffed two beer bottles filled with gasoline and a weighty metal sledgehammer.

In the early morning hours of April 13, he scaled the fence of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s official residence and shattered a window with the sledgehammer, throwing one of his Molotov cocktails inside, prosecutors say.

Windows were already beginning to glow with firelight when Balmer smashed another window and infiltrated the house. He headed to the heart of the home, where Shapiro, his wife and their children slept with more than a dozen overnight guests.

Unable to break through a set of locked doors at the entrance of the sleeping quarters, Balmer ignited another Molotov cocktail in the decorated dining room. Hours before, the sleeping houseguests had gathered there to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Passover.

Nothing could have prepared the guests to be evacuated by state troopers in the middle of the night. They fled as flames consumed the home, blackening the walls and transforming chandeliers, furniture and walls into ashen carcasses. No one inside was harmed.

The next morning, Shapiro stood in front of the blown-out windows of the home. His voice swelled to a near yell as he insisted, “If this individual was trying to deter me from doing my job as your governor, rest assured I will try to work even harder than I was just yesterday for the people of Pennsylvania.”

But in the weeks and months since, the governor said he has been privately grappling with the gravity of the targeted attack on his family in an age of rising political violence.

“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,” Shapiro said Tuesday.

Attacks on American leaders and activists across the political spectrum have become a sobering reality, including the recent assassination of a conservative activist Charlie Kirk, the killing of a Democratic Minnesota lawmaker and her husband, and the bludgeoning of Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s husband in their home. Last year, a gunman shot Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

On Tuesday, Balmer pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of Shapiro and entered pleas to terrorism, 22 counts of arson, aggravated arson, burglary, aggravated assault and reckless endangerment. When asked why he did it, Balmer cited Israel’s military actions in Gaza, prosecutors said.

Shapiro gave an emotional public statement Tuesday alongside his wife, state First Lady Lori Shapiro, explaining that the attack has left lasting scars on his family.

“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 and to our nieces and nephews,” the governor said.

As parents, Shapiro said, they have struggled to explain why someone would want to harm their family.

“Candidly, I don’t know that I’ve been able to give them the right answers,” Shapiro said. “I don’t know that I’ve been able to ease our children’s worries.”

Video shows Balmer running and kicking the double doors leading to the governor’s private family quarters. Though the doors did not yield, Shapiro has not been able to escape the image – or the thought of the blunt sledgehammer Balmer had intended to strike him with.

“Those videos are chilling. They’ve been haunting me for months,” Shapiro said. He added, “How were they able to get so far into the governor’s residence, the place that was supposed to be the safest place we could possibly be?”

Speaking on CNN’s “The Lead” later Tuesday, Shapiro sat at his desk directly across from those doors, one of many reminders of the family’s close encounter.

“It is hard for us, as we walk through these halls, to know that he was in here as well,” he said.

‘Scars will remain’

As leaders from across the state, country and world have reached out to Shapiro in recent months to offer support, their conversations have inevitably turned to the growing fear that they or their loved ones could be the next target.

“I’ve talked to people who are thinking about running for office who have said they don’t want to because they don’t want to put their families at risk,” Shapiro said at the news conference. “These are good people who just want to serve, want to do right by their communities.”

Shapiro and his wife have always been aware that serving in public office has risks.

“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,” he said.

“Sadly, this made it all real.”

Political violence in the US is at a tipping point, the governor told CNN, calling on national leaders across the political spectrum to step forward with solutions.

“We need all leaders to speak and act with moral clarity, to call it out, to condemn it, and to try and take down the temperature, so we don’t end up in situations like this,” he said.

The governor noted Trump has consistently blamed Democrats for fueling the growing trend, even though data and real-life examples have consistently debunked this claim.

“He should know better. He should want to bring down the temperature, and yet he’s been cherry-picking which violence he wants to condemn,” Shapiro told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “To suggest that the responsibility of political violence exists on just one side of the aisle or another is absolutely wrong.”

CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.

Though Shapiro told CNN his family is “not willing to live in fear,” the attack is bound to have a lasting psychological impact.

“We will forever be changed by this,” Shapiro said earlier Tuesday.

“We know that time will heal, but the scars will remain.”

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