A person armed with a pistol and carrying zip ties entered a Pennsylvania hospital’s intensive care unit Saturday and took workers members hostage earlier than he was killed by police in a shootout that additionally left an officer lifeless, authorities stated.
Three staff at UPMC Memorial hospital, together with a health care provider, a nurse and a custodian, and two different officers have been shot and wounded within the assault, York county district lawyer Tim Barker stated. A fourth staffer was injured in a fall.
Gunfire erupted after officers went to have interaction the shooter, whom Barker recognized as Diogenes Archangel-Ortiz, 49. He stated Archangel-Ortiz was holding at gunpoint a feminine workers member who had her palms certain with zip ties when police opened fireplace.
“This can be a big loss to our group,” Barker stated at a information convention following the taking pictures. “It’s completely clear, and past any and all doubt, that the officers have been justified in taking their motion utilizing lethal power.”
Barker added that whereas the investigation is in its early levels, it seems Archangel-Ortiz had earlier contact with the hospital’s ICU earlier within the week for “a medical goal involving one other particular person” – and he deliberately focused the employees there.
Nobody answered the door on Saturday at an handle in York believed to be that of Archangel-Ortiz.
The officer who died was recognized as Andrew Duarte of the West York borough police division.
“All of us have damaged hearts and are grieving at his loss,” West York borough supervisor Shawn Mauck advised the Related Press.
Duarte was a legislation enforcement veteran who joined the division in 2022 after 5 years with the Denver Police Division, based on his LinkedIn profile. He described receiving a “hero award” in 2021 from Moms In opposition to Drunk Driving for his work in impaired driving enforcement for the state of Colorado.
“I’ve a sort A character and like to reach all that I do,” his LinkedIn profile stated.
Duarte additionally labored as a patrol officer in Denver, was extremely regarded for his work and was shut associates with different officers, the division there stated in an announcement.
The Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, stated he met on Saturday night with Duarte’s dad and mom and fellow officers who have been wounded.
“Their willingness to run towards hazard helped save the lives of others,” Shapiro stated on the social platform X. “I’m grateful to them and all legislation enforcement who answered the decision as we speak in York.”
At a makeshift memorial on the entrance steps of the West York Borough Police Division, Linda Shields dropped off roses Saturday and dabbed tears as she considered her son, a police officer in Maryland.
“He was so younger,” Shields stated of Duarte. “It is senseless in any respect.”
Shapiro known as the assault on police and well being care staff “the act of a coward”.
UPMC Memorial is a five-story, 104-bed hospital that opened in 2019 in York, a metropolis of about 40,000 individuals recognized for its creation of York Peppermint Patties in 1940.
Saturday’s assault was one in every of greater than 35 mass shootings within the US up to now this yr, based on the Gun Violence Archive, a nonpartisan useful resource which defines a mass taking pictures as one through which 4 or extra victims are wounded or killed.
The perennially excessive numbers of mass shootings within the US have prompted many within the nation to name for extra substantial gun management, although Congress has been principally unwilling or unable to enact such measures.
The assault on Saturday was additionally a part of a wave of gun violence lately that has swept by means of US hospitals and medical facilities, which have struggled to adapt to the rising threats. Such assaults have helped make healthcare one of many nation’s most violent fields, with staff struggling extra nonfatal accidents from office violence than staff in some other occupation, based on the US Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention.
In 2023, a shooter killed a safety guard within the foyer of New Hampshire’s state psychiatric hospital earlier than being fatally shot by a state trooper. An Oregon hospital safety guard was shot to demise whereas defending a maternity ward from an attacker that yr, too.
In 2022, a person killed two staff at a Dallas hospital whereas there to observe his youngster’s delivery. In Could of that yr, a person opened fireplace in a medical middle ready room in Atlanta, killing one girl and wounding 4. And only one month later, a gunman killed his surgeon and three different individuals at a Tulsa, Oklahoma, medical workplace as a result of he blamed the physician for his persevering with ache after an operation.
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