Officer killed after gunman took hostages at Pennsylvania hospital

YORK, Pa. — A man armed with a pistol and carrying zip ties entered a Pennsylvania hospital’s intensive care unit on Saturday and took staff members hostage before he was killed by police in a shootout that also left an officer dead, authorities said.

Three staffers at UPMC Memorial Hospital, including a doctor, a nurse and a custodian, and two other officers were shot and wounded in the attack, York County Dist. Atty. Tim Barker said. A fourth staff member was injured during a fall.

Gunfire erupted after officers went to engage the shooter, whom Barker identified as Diogenes Archangel-Ortiz, 49. He said Archangel-Ortiz was holding at gunpoint a female staff member who had her hands tied with zip ties.

“This is a huge loss to our community,” Barker said at a news conference. “It is absolutely clear, and beyond any and all doubt, that the officers were justified in taking their action using deadly force.”

Barker said it appears Archangel-Ortiz had contact with the ICU earlier in the week for “a medical purpose involving another individual” and that he intentionally targeted the workers.

The officer who died in the shooting was identified as Andrew Duarte of the West York Borough Police Department.

“We all have broken hearts and are grieving at his loss,” West York Borough Manager Shawn Mauck told the Associated Press.

Duarte joined the West York Borough Police Department in 2022 after five years with the Denver Police Department in Colorado, according to Duarte’s LinkedIn profile.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro described the attack as “the act of a coward.”

“Let it not be lost on anyone the act of extraordinary bravery and courage by the healthcare workers here, by the law enforcement professionals … who ran toward danger to keep people safe,” Shapiro said.

UPMC Memorial is a five-story, 104-bed hospital that opened in 2019 in York, a city of about 40,000 people known for its creation of York Peppermint Patties in 1940.

The shooting is part of a wave of gun violence in recent years that has swept through U.S. hospitals and medical centers, which have struggled to adapt to the growing threats. Healthcare workers suffer more nonfatal injuries from workplace violence than workers in any other profession, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In 2023, a shooter killed a security guard in the lobby of New Hampshire’s state psychiatric hospital before being fatally shot by a state trooper.

In 2022, a man killed two workers at a Dallas hospital while there to watch his child’s birth. In May of that year, a man opened fire in a medical center waiting room in Atlanta, killing one woman and wounding four. And just one month later, a gunman killed his surgeon and three other people at a Tulsa, Okla., medical office because he blamed the doctor for his continuing pain after an operation.

Scolforo writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City contributed to this report.