Harrisburg, PA – Today, Governor Josh Shapiro and First Lady Lori Shapiro delivered remarks following the guilty plea by the individual charged in connection with the attempted assassination of Governor Shapiro and the arson attack at the Governor’s Residence in April.
See below for the Governor’s remarks as delivered:
“Earlier today, the defendant in the April attack at the Governor's Residence pled guilty to attempted murder, arson, terrorism, and several other counts.
“It's hard for me to stand before you today and utter the words ‘attempted murder,’ when it's your own life — to know that someone tried to kill me.
“It's especially hard to know that he tried to burn our family to death, while we slept.
“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.
“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. It's been really hard.
“And candidly, I don't know that I've been able to give them the right answers. I don't know that I've been able to ease our children's worries, but I can tell you, we've tried, and it's been an ongoing effort, to even just a few moments ago.
“‘Why would someone want to do us harm,’ our kids will ask, ‘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?’
“As you saw from the videos that the district attorney played, 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.
“I know those videos are chilling. They've been haunting me for months. I've been trying to unsee them for the last six months.
“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. The spot in the State Dining Room where the fire first began, the smashed glass of the windows that he used to enter into the home.
“I'm struck when I'm outside walking in the gardens, usually on the phone, tending to business, by the charred bush that remains outside that window where he threw the first Molotov cocktail.
“We also see the effects of his crimes in the extraordinary scope of damage at the Governor's Residence. The burden of the cleanup and the rebuild has been enormous, and as you know, it is ongoing.
“What you probably don't see, is the subsequent security changes in all aspects of our lives and our children's lives, and this construction all around us is a constant reminder of what happened and that our personal safety is not assured and that we are vulnerable.
“His crimes also caused massive disruption in our lives and the lives of the people who are privileged to know and who work at the Governor's Residence.
“I want you to know, we will forever be grateful to the firefighters who rushed toward danger and put out that fire, just in time.
“We're also incredibly grateful to the troopers who rushed our family out to safety, in those early morning hours.
“And we're so appreciative of the dedicated staff at the Governor's Residence, who continue to come to work with purpose and with joy, every day.
“Lori and I are mindful that serving in public office today brings with it risks.
“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 have happened here.
“Sadly, this made it all real, and it brings with it a real sense of vulnerability that our family feels every single day.
“I want you to know we are working through this, and you've heard me talk about the emotional toll this attack took. I need you to know this is an ongoing thing that we are dealing with and we are working through, and I think we're confident it'll get better, but we also know it's going to always be with us.
“Sadly, as you know, our family is not the only ones to experience political violence — violence that is used to try and silence people or intimidate people.
“I think it's important that, in this time of rising political violence, that none of us grow numb to it or accept this as the normal course of doing business for elected officials.
“So many leaders from here in Pennsylvania and across the country—actually, across the globe—have reached out to offer comfort over the last number of months, and inevitably, those conversations turn to their own sense of vulnerability, their own worry about political violence.
“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. These are good people who just want to serve—want to do right by their communities—who are being impacted by this unacceptable level of political violence that we're seeing in our country.
“I think we need real accountability for acts of political violence, and today is real accountability for the violence that came here to Pennsylvania.
“I want to thank District Attorney Fran Chardo—a friend for nearly 20 years—and his team in the Dauphin County District Attorney's Office. They've demonstrated great care, concern and professionalism.
“This is a just outcome, and I want you to know that our family fully supported the plea that he negotiated.
“You know, from the morning after the attack, when the District Attorney and I and other law enforcement met, at the Governor's Residence, to this morning, District Attorney Chardo has demonstrated strong, compassionate leadership, and I am grateful to him.
“Today is a holiday in our faith — a moment to renew our spirituality and our connection to God.
“I want you to know, we've leaned a lot on our faith these past six months to try and work through this.
“We have also leaned on the faith of so many others in the process.
“We have been so strengthened by the faith and the prayers that others have shared with us, and we have seen so much light, in the midst of this darkness.
“I want you to know, we are not deterred in our desire to serve others — in part, because of our faith and how strongly we lean on it, and in part, because of the examples that others have set for us.
“We remain focused and committed to doing our work on behalf of the good people of Pennsylvania, and nothing, and no one, will stop us from doing that important work.
“We will forever be changed by this. We know that time will heal, but the scars will remain.
“I want to thank you all for being here today, and I especially want to thank those of you from, the media from this area, who have been there since the first moments after the attack. I've seen on your faces how this has impacted you, and I appreciate the way in which you have shared this with others who follow your coverage.
“Lori and I are grateful to you. We're grateful to the people of Pennsylvania, and we're grateful to have some closure on this chapter in our lives.
“Thank you.”
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