YORK, Pa. — An officer killed while responding to a Pennsylvania hospital siege was struck by a shotgun blast fired by police that also hit an armed man holding hostages, a prosecutor disclosed at a news conference Wednesday.
The attacker and West York Patrolman Andrew W. Duarte were killed in the gunfire in York on Feb. 22, while several other people were injured.
The shotgun blast also wounded a second officer responding to the intensive care unit, York County District Attorney Tim Barker said in announcing the results of his investigation.
Barker called the officers heroes who ran into a dangerous situation, ready to risk their lives and save hostages. He said attacker Diogenes Archangel-Ortiz “unleashed a torrent of evil” and directly caused Duarte’s death.
“I looked at every moment of video and I saw on every person’s face that willingness to walk into, to run into the path of gunfire and potential death. They were willing to lay down their lives for every single person at that hospital,” Barker said. He called their actions “100% justified and legally appropriate.”
The attack at UPMC Memorial Hospital occurred after the gunman learned from a doctor that the woman he lived with had died after treatment there, Barker told reporters. Investigators seeking a motive in Archangel-Ortiz’s “mental state” came up empty, he said.
“There was no description provided whatsoever that would lead anyone to have believed that the actor was going to commit this type of mass violence,” Barker said.
Duarte’s last act was to run toward the threat, Chief Matthew Millsaps had said previously at the officer’s funeral.
Archangel-Ortiz, 49, had purchased zip ties and a knife that morning and used a gun stolen in 2017 from a neighboring county during the attack, Barker said. He said Archangel-Ortiz appeared to become nauseous when a doctor told him the woman had been moved to the hospital morgue.
Moments later, he displayed a gun and announced: “This is what we’re going to talk about,” Barker said. Archangel-Ortiz shot the doctor, grazing his arm and piercing a jacket. The doctor, who had texted to warn colleagues of the gunman, fled from the ICU.
What ensued was a chaotic series of events in which Archangel-Ortiz threatened hostages and patients and made one hospital worker zip tie others. A hospital worker who had been shot in the leg was able to flee and lock herself in a bathroom.
Barker said Archangel-Ortiz also called his brother during the siege, telling him to clean up his home and give away his jewelry. “This is how I’m going out,” Archangel-0rtiz told his brother, Barker said.
Police tried to negotiate and de-escalate the crisis, Barker said, as they also organized teams at the intensive care doors and formulated a plan to have officers follow someone with a tactical shield into the unit.
He said Duarte was hit in the shoulder and chest.
In all, Barker said, four workers were hurt — the doctor and worker who were shot, a third person with head trauma and a fourth with a minor injury. Two police officers were shot, a third was injured by shrapnel and Duarte was killed. He did not disclose the name of the officer who fired the shotgun.
When police recovered Archangel-Ortiz’s 9mm handgun, it was not loaded.
Barker said they had no details on why Archangel-Ortiz did what he did, noting, “sometimes there is no ‘why.’”
“The only thing that we can state is that he, on his own, decided to enter UPMC that day, fully prepared to take hostages and kill people,” Barker said.
Some of the nurses who survived the attack have shared their accounts in social media, disclosing details about injuries and treatment and how the attack has haunted the survivors. The attack highlighted rising violence against U.S. health care workers and the challenges of protecting them.
Nurse Tosha Trostle said in a Facebook post that she was held against him as a shield at gunpoint, arms zip-tied behind her back, as they walked through a doorway and encountered a phalanx of responding police officers. She said she begged Archangel-Ortiz to let her go and that he pushed the gun against her neck and spine. She heard gunshots and fell onto the floor under his body, then was able to get to safety.