The pounding of fists on the governor’s bedroom door was loud and urgent. The mansion was on fire, a state trooper yelled, and Pennsylvania’s first family needed to get out immediately.
Gov. Josh Shapiro and his wife, Lori, jumped out of bed and rushed from room to room to wake their four children, their two dogs, and their extended family who had gathered earlier for the first night of Passover. They ran down a back staircase into the safety of the yard, where they huddled together in their pajamas beneath the blanket of the cool, misty air — now filling with billowing black smoke and illuminated by orange flames.
The family didn’t know it yet, but just moments earlier, a thin, bearded man had crept through the property under the cover of night on a mission to burn down the home — and, according to police, kill Shapiro and everyone else inside.
Cody Balmer, 38, was living with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, his family said later, and had spiraled into a mental health crisis after he stopped taking his medication. His mother said she had tried to get her son help that week — to no avail.
So Balmer, police say, was left consumed by his destructive thoughts.
Armed with a small sledgehammer and some homemade Molotov cocktails, Balmer walked nearly three miles to the historic home shortly before 2 a.m. Sunday. Within minutes, police said, he hopped the security fence, slinked across the grounds, and smashed the windows leading into the ballroom.
Then, he threw at least two bottle bombs into the 29,000-square-foot mansion, sending a wing of the first floor up in flames, before escaping the same way he had arrived.
Balmer confessed to the crimes before the end of the hour, records show. And yet Pennsylvania State Police did not arrest him for more than 12 hours — after he walked to police headquarters and turned himself in.
Police have not disclosed Balmer’s motive, but in the moments after the fire was started, he called 911 and said that Shapiro, who is Jewish, was a “monster” and that Balmer would “not take part in his plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people.”
A host of questions remain — including how many troopers were on duty that night, how Balmer arrived and escaped so easily, and how police failed to find him in the many hours that followed. State police declined to answer questions about the crime and the actions of the governor’s security detail, state troopers, police, and firefighters on that night, citing the ongoing investigation.
This is how the attack unfolded, according to a review of dozens of records and interviews with local and state law enforcement who responded to the scene.
Christie Balmer was at her breaking point. Her son, she told Penbrook Borough police, had stopped taking his medication, was “irritable and agitated,” and needed help. She said she had sought help from Dauphin County’s crisis intervention services, but because her son had not threatened to hurt himself or others, he did not meet the threshold to be involuntarily committed.
Her hands were tied.
After learning his mother reached out for help, Cody Balmer left home, his mother told police. Investigators later learned that he went to a hotel in Shippensburg — but by the time officers arrived there, he had checked himself out. The front desk employee who helped him said Balmer “appeared fine” as he walked off.
Before dusk, Gov. Josh Shapiro and about a dozen relatives gathered in the mansion’s dining room for a Seder on the first night of Passover.
The tables had been carefully set with white napkins, freshly polished silverware, goblets of water and wine, plates of matzo, and other customary foods of the holiday.
Until about 10 p.m., the family would light candles, sing, and read from the Haggadah as they shared a festive meal.
This night was different from all other nights, the adults told the children as they celebrated the blessings of freedom and recounted the story of how God led the children of Israel out of bondage thousands of years ago.
But the night was also different in ways they did not yet know.
Balmer was stirring. He had decided, police said, that this was the night he would try to kill the governor.
In a bag, he placed a sledgehammer and at least two Heineken beer bottles filled with gas he had drained from a lawn mower earlier that day. He slipped into a black Snap-on tools jacket, boots, and two different colored gloves, and began the three-mile walk from his mother’s home in Penbrook to the governor’s mansion.
He arrived in about 75 minutes. If he saw Shapiro, he later told police, he planned to bash him with the hammer — and light the place on fire.
Balmer approached the mansion and hopped a 7-foot iron fence along the south-facing perimeter.
Lt. Col. George Bivens of the Pennsylvania State Police said the troopers assigned to the grounds noticed the gates had been breached within minutes, after a sensor alarm was triggered, and began to search for the intruder.
But Balmer moved with stealth, and hid in a bush to evade a trooper.
“He clearly had a plan. He was very methodical in his approach, and moved through it without a lot of hurry,” Bivens said.
Balmer quietly traversed the garden and patio, toward the windows of the mansion that overlooked the grounds, his Molotov cocktails at the ready.
Balmer smashed a window with a sledgehammer and threw the first bottle bomb into the piano room of the residence. He then broke another window and entered the dining room, exploding another fiery glass cocktail.
He stayed inside for about a minute as the blaze grew before heading toward the dining room door, kicking it open, and, overcome by the smoke and flames, fleeing the property over the same fence he had initially breached.
About an hour after falling asleep, Shapiro awakened to muffled yells in the hallway outside his bedroom, followed by thunderous pounding on the door. He and his family needed to get out immediately, he was told, and he and his wife quickly began rounding up their sleeping family and the mansion staff.
They could smell smoke, but had no idea of the flames unfolding beneath them in a roaring and destructive blaze that fire officials later said could have been much worse.
Shapiro’s young nephew had recently learned in school that in the event of a fire, he should stop for nothing. And so the child left his shoes behind and raced in his bare feet down a back flight of stairs into the yard.
The fire alarms were sounding, but with no sprinkler system in the home, the flames continued to spread.
Dozens of firefighters arrived at the mansion within about three minutes of the first call for help.
Within about 12 minutes, the bulk of the fire was contained, and by 2:32 a.m., it was officially placed under control.
The family was lucky that the door to the main set of stairs had been closed when Balmer threw the firebombs — preventing the flames from spreading and allowing the family time to escape, said Harrisburg Fire Chief Brian Enterline.
“It would have been a totally different fire and a totally different outcome, most likely, had that door not been closed,” he said.
The amount of accelerant and flammable furniture, and the lack of fire sprinklers, led Enterline to panic at what his crews were facing when he learned that up to 25 people were inside the burning building.
“It was surreal,” he said. “It really came to me as I’m running down the stairs in my house.”
Balmer called 911 and sounded out of breath and delusional, according to an audio recording of the call, beginning with an apology. Then he said that Shapiro “needs to know that Cody Balmer will not take part in his plans for the Palestinian people,” adding that “our people have been put through too much by that monster.”
He went on to say that the governor “needs to leave my family alone” and “get his eyes off of my daughters.”
“I only want to be able to provide for my children,” he said. “I should not be taken to these extremes. It’s not fair.”
Before hanging up, Balmer said: “You all know where to find me. I’m not hiding, and I will confess to everything that I have done.”
Balmer then returned to his mother’s home, police said, and changed his clothes.
But for reasons that remain unclear, he was free until he turned himself in 12 hours later.
Word began to spread that the governor’s mansion had been set on fire, and lawmakers from both parties condemned the attack. House Majority Leader Matt Bradford (D., Montgomery) called the arson a “senseless, disgusting act.” The Pennsylvania Republican Party called the blaze “shocking and troubling.”
Many members of the Jewish community were on edge, given the timing of the attack on the first night of a holiday.
Later that afternoon, a woman called police to say that Balmer, her ex-boyfriend, had set the governor’s mansion ablaze. He told her he did it, she said, and asked her to call the police.
A short time later, Balmer walked to Pennsylvania State Police headquarters in Harrisburg and turned himself in. He confessed to the crimes, according to the warrant for his arrest, and detailed how he plotted and carried out the fires.
He was charged with attempted murder, arson, and related crimes.
When Balmer went to court the following day, the 38-year-old appeared gaunt and unstable. His beige, long-sleeved shirt draped over his bony arms, and as news cameras flashed in his face, he stuck out his tongue.
His public defenders have said they intend to argue that Balmer was not in his right mind when he started the fires, and the attorneys said they will file a petition with the courts asking that Balmer be evaluated to determine whether he is mentally competent to stand trial.
Shortly after the arrest, Shapiro gathered with state officials outside the mansion to condemn what Balmer had done.
“This kind of violence is becoming far too common in our society,” the governor said, standing in front of blackened and broken windows of the room where less than 24 hours earlier he had been hosting a Passover Seder.
“We have to be better than this,” he said, echoing comments he made after the assassination attempt on then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in Butler, Pa., in July. “And we have a responsibility to all be better.“
Trump has not called Shapiro since the fire, he said Friday.
The governor has thanked his state police security detail and first responders for keeping his family safe. He was careful not to speculate on Balmer’s motives and urged others not to jump to conclusions.
But speculation swirled that the Passover fire was fueled by antisemitism.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), the nation’s highest-ranking Jewish elected official, called on the Department of Justice to investigate whether the arson was a hate crime.
Shapiro, who has said nothing will deter him from “proudly and openly practicing” his faith, said it was too early to know what gave rise to the crime.
“As to Senator Schumer or anybody else, I don’t think it’s helpful for people on the outside, who haven’t seen the evidence, who don’t know what occurred, who are applying their own viewpoints to the situation, to weigh in in that manner,” Shapiro told reporters. “My trust is with the prosecutor to make the decision.”
State police have said they will hire an outside investigator to delve into possible security lapses at the mansion and evaluate law enforcement’s response to the fire.
Shapiro, who quickly moved to reopen the governor’s residence to the public, said there were plans for significant security improvements to the house and grounds.
Still, he said: “I have total and complete confidence in the Pennsylvania State Police, and the members of our detail.”
