FIRE ON PASSOVER

“Can’t pay rent? Sell your f**** organs! No more organs? F**** die then this is America. Be grateful for the opportunity you had.”

— Cody Allen Balmer, November 2022 Facebook post

In the early hours of Sunday morning, as Jewish families across the country gathered to celebrate Passover, one man in Pennsylvania lit a match. That man, 38-year-old Cody Allen Balmer, did not come to break bread. He came to burn down the house of Governor Josh Shapiro — a Jewish man, a father, and the sitting executive of a U.S. state — with his wife and children sleeping inside.

He brought Molotov cocktails. Homemade. One through the window. Another tossed inside. Then he smashed a second pane, climbed through the broken glass, and set off an incendiary device in the main dining room — the very place where Shapiro’s family had held their seder hours earlier.

According to court documents and officials, this was not random. This was not chaos. This was targeted.

This was terror.

A SYSTEM THAT SHRUGGED

Cody Balmer should never have been free to do this. He had already racked up an extensive record — not of tweets or red flags, but of real, documented violence. He stood accused of beating his wife and children. In a 2023 police affidavit, a child called 911 and said Balmer was “beating his mother.” When officers arrived, his wife was outside, “yelling and crying,” and Balmer was still inside the home. He admitted to taking a bottle of pills in a suicide attempt. He admitted to shoving his son. Then things got darker.

He hit his 10-year-old son in the chest and stepped on his broken leg. He struck his wife and his 13-year-old son with closed fists. He bit his wife and left a puncture wound on her hand. That was all in the official complaint.

The response from the courts? A $5,000 unsecured bail — meaning he didn’t pay a dime to walk free.

Why? “To make it easier to co-parent,” said the docket. You read that right. A man who stomped on a child’s broken leg was sent home with no consequences, because the system thought shared custody was the priority.

And in case you think he was just a powder keg in a domestic dispute, his Facebook posts paint the rest of the picture. He shared memes of flaming Molotovs embroidered with the phrase “Be the light you want to see in the world.” He ranted about politicians, attacked both Trump and Biden, mocked the poor, and said people struggling to afford rent should “sell their f**** organs” or die. “This is America,” he wrote. “Be grateful.”

He had already pleaded guilty to forgery. He was facing foreclosure. He blamed everything on bad luck and injury. But none of that stopped him from allegedly crossing a fence, breaking into a home, and nearly murdering a family in what may be prosecuted as a hate crime.

A TARGETED ATTACK — DURING PASSOVER

Governor Josh Shapiro is Jewish. And this was not lost on Balmer, according to Dauphin County District Attorney Fran Chardo. Though Pennsylvania does not have a direct hate crime statute, prosecutors are now weighing ethnic intimidation charges, which function as hate crime enhancements under state law. But Chardo notes they might be legally redundant, since Balmer is already facing five first-degree felonies — attempted murder, terrorism, arson, burglary.

“It doesn’t get higher than the first degree of felony, so there’s nothing to increase it to,” Chardo told CBS Philadelphia.

Still, he confirmed the obvious:

“We do have evidence of that… that he made reference to the governor’s faith.”

The evidence is in the search warrant affidavit. Though not yet public, officials say it outlines the motive. He knew Shapiro was Jewish. He knew the home would be occupied. And he struck during one of the holiest observances in Judaism.

There is a word for this kind of attack. It’s not protest. It’s not outburst. It’s domestic terrorism, fueled by rage, antisemitism, and a system that repeatedly looked the other way.

HOW MANY WARNINGS DOES A MAN NEED TO GIVE?

Balmer told us who he was. His family told us. His children called the cops. He posted violence online. He shared Molotov memes. He bit his wife. He broke into a home and tried to kill a Jewish family.

And somehow, he still made it to the front door of the Governor’s Mansion.

This is not just about one man. This is about every judge who looked at his record and said, “Let him go.” Every prosecutor who prioritized paperwork over people. Every system that treats domestic violence as a private matter until someone lights a match and walks into your house.

This time, it was the Governor of Pennsylvania. But the message is broader: if they won’t protect him, what chance do you have?

The fire at Shapiro’s home didn’t start in the dining room. It started in a courtroom years ago, when a judge read about a man stomping a child’s broken leg and chose leniency over logic.

NEVER AGAIN — OR NEVER ACCOUNTABLE?

We say “Never Again” with boldness, but we enforce it with bureaucracy. What good is a slogan when your government can’t even keep a known violent offender from bringing firebombs into the home of a Jewish governor during Passover?

Balmer didn’t fall through the cracks. He was the crack. A rupture in our legal conscience. A product of cowardice in robes and complacency in offices.

This wasn’t random.

This was preventable.

This was America.

And if we don’t fix this system — if we don’t protect victims of domestic violence, if we don’t take threats seriously before they become acts of terror — then the next match might be aimed at you.

---

If you believe this story deserves more attention, share it. Support independent journalism at Closer to the Edge. Our mission is truth, even when it burns.