YORK, Pa. – Officials say a police officer has been killed after responding to a shooting at a central Pennsylvania hospital. The shooting occurred Saturday at the UPMC Memorial hospital in York. The officer worked for the West York borough police.
A gunman was killed while details of additional injuries were not immediately available. Hospital officials did say no patients were injured.
What we know:
A police officer was killed Saturday after responding to a shooting at a central Pennsylvania hospital where the suspected gunman also was killed, officials said.
The officer who died in the shooting at the UPMC Memorial hospital in York was identified as Andrew Duarte of the West York Borough Police Department. He was responding to a mutual aid call, the department posted on its Facebook page.
“We all have broken hearts and are grieving at his loss,” West York Borough Manager Shawn Mauck told The Associated Press.
Law enforcement is on the premises and is managing the situation, Susan Manko, vice president of public relations for UPMC, said in an emailed statement.
About the officer:
Andrew Duarte was a law enforcement veteran who 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. He described receiving a “hero award” in 2021 from Mothers Against Drunk Driving for his work in impaired driving enforcement for the state of Colorado.
“I have a type A personality and like to succeed in all that I do,” his LinkedIn profile said.
Dig deeper:
UPMC Memorial is a five-story, 104-bed hospital in York that opened in 2019.
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. Such attacks have helped make health care one of the nation’s most violent fields, with workers suffering 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, Oklahoma, medical office because he blamed the doctor for his continuing pain after an operation.
What’s next:
The hospital asked employees who were not scheduled to work Saturday to stay home.
Families of patients arriving on site should report to the parking lot of the OSS building across the street from the hospital, Manko said.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said he is on the way to the hospital after being briefed on the shooting. He said the hospital is “secure.”
The Source: Information for this article was provided by the Associated Press.
