The gunman who opened fire inside Pennsylvania’s UPMC Memorial Hospital — killing a police officer and wounding five others — faced the death of a loved one who’d been receiving treatment in the ICU in the days before the shooting.
Diogenes Archangel-Ortiz walked into the hospital in West Manchester Township armed with a semi-automatic handgun on Saturday just before 11 a.m., according to York County District Attorney Tim Barker. He then took several staff members hostage, binding their wrists with zip ties, before engaging in a shootout with law enforcement, culminating in his death as well as that of West York Police Officer Andrew Duarte.
In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Lester Mendoza, a certified physician’s assistant at UPMC, shared his thoughts on the “aftermath of tragedy” and the impacts it has had on both his community and the gunman.
“I’ve seen two things: unimaginable pain and unstoppable unity,” he wrote. “If there’s one thing I know now more than ever, it’s this — love and the will to do what’s right will always be stronger than fear and terror.”
In a separate post, Mendoza also recalled his recent interactions with Archangel-Ortiz, who received heartbreaking news at the hospital just days before the shooting.
“I was there when we delivered the worst news imaginable to him — that his loved one was gone,” Mendoza wrote. “I saw his devastation firsthand. In that moment, I truly did not see a monster. He was simply broken.”
Mendoza went on to reflect on how he was able to relate to Archangel-Ortiz by opening up about his own experience with grief.
“My colleague and I shared our own personal memories of experience of loss with this man,” he said. “We developed a human connection as he showed us pictures of his loved one, an engagement gift of a beautiful pink and white necklace and watch, which I thanked him for sharing and he thanked me for sharing mine.”
“I would have never imagined or expected him to do something like this. But grief, exhaustion, isolation, and a lack of mental health and social support services create cracks that people fall through,” he added. “And when they do, the consequences can be catastrophic.”
Mendoza also thanked Duarte for his “ultimate sacrifice” and preventing “additional fellow colleagues/friends/work family from also perishing from this tragic, dark event.”
A law enforcement veteran, Duarte joined the West York Borough Police Department in 2022 after five years with the Denver Police Department, according to his LinkedIn profile. His funeral is set for Friday in Red Lion, and while it’s not open to the public, it will be livestreamed.
Three workers at UPMC Memorial Hospital — including a doctor, a nurse and a custodian — and two more officers were shot and wounded in the attack, according to D.A. Barker. A fourth staffer was also hurt in a fall amid the violent chaos. Their names have not been released and their current conditions were not provided.