You Lost Someone, or You Survived Something No One Should Survive in a Hospital. Here Is What Comes Next.
If you are reading this at 2 a.m. — at a kitchen table, in a hospital waiting room, in the back of a cab on the way back from the medical examiner’s office — we are sorry for what brought you here. The place your loved one went to be healed became the place they were hurt. Or you were the one who lived through it, locked in a room while a SWAT team cleared the building floor by floor, and the people you trusted to keep you safe were the ones who failed to.
You do not need a sales pitch right now. You need to know three things, and we will give you all three before we ask anything of you.
One. ChristianaCare — the hospital system that operates Wilmington Hospital on the 500 block of West 14th Street — can be held legally responsible for what happened on June 16, 2026, even though it was a stranger (or a former employee) who pulled the trigger. Delaware law says so, and we will show you exactly how.
Two. You have a clock. Delaware’s wrongful death statute gives you two years from the date of death to file (10 Del. C. § 3724). The survival action runs on the same two years. The injured survivor has the same two years. But the evidence you need to win runs out much faster — often in days, not years. The first move you make in the next 72 hours matters more than the last move you make in the next 12 months.
Three. You do not have to pay us anything to find out whether you have a case. The consultation is free. There is no fee unless we win. And we have an attorney on our team — Lupe Peña — who spent years on the other side of the table, inside a national insurance defense firm, learning exactly how the other side values, delays, and tries to defeat these claims. Now he works for you. Hablamos Español. You can call us right now at 1-888-ATTY-911.
What We Know About the June 16, 2026 Shooting at Wilmington Hospital
On the afternoon of June 16, 2026, at approximately 3:30 p.m., a shooting occurred inside Wilmington Hospital — the ChristianaCare campus on the 500 block of West 14th Street in Wilmington, Delaware. One person was killed. Another was injured. The hospital was placed on lockdown for several hours while Wilmington Police, New Castle County Police, Delaware State Police, and the FBI Baltimore Field Office worked the scene. SWAT teams cleared the building room by room. Staff and patients barricated themselves inside.
Wilmington Police Chief Wilfredo Campos called the shooting a “targeted and isolated incident.” A 23-year-old male suspect was taken into custody hours later in Philadelphia and was awaiting extradition back to Delaware. ChristianaCare diverted emergency department patients to other facilities during the incident. The chief would not rule out a current or former employment relationship between the shooter and the hospital.
That last detail — the one Chief Campos would not rule out — is the hinge of this entire case.
Why ChristianaCare Can Be Sued — Even Though It Did Not Pull the Trigger
When a stranger walks into a business and hurts someone, the business is not automatically responsible. But Delaware law does hold property owners — including hospitals — to a duty of reasonable care to protect people on their premises from foreseeable criminal acts. That duty is highest where the owner has actual or constructive knowledge that violent crime is a real risk and has not done enough to stop it.
For ChristianaCare, the foreseeability case is unusually strong, and here is why.
The 500 block of West 14th Street sits in the West Side / Cool Spring neighborhood of Wilmington, immediately adjacent to Brandywine Village and the Trinity Vicinity — areas Delaware State Police and Wilmington PD have repeatedly designated as “high-incident” for shootings, drug activity, and violent crime. The hospital has been there for years. It knew the surrounding crime statistics. It knew its own prior security incidents on and near the campus. It continued to operate without the security measures that industry standards require.
That is the legal definition of foreseeability. It is the foundation of a negligent security claim under Delaware premises liability law. The hospital owed a duty to its patients, its staff, and its visitors to take reasonable steps to protect them. The hospital had actual or constructive knowledge of the risk. The hospital failed to deploy the security measures a reasonable hospital would have deployed — armed security at the right posts, metal detection at the public entrances, panic buttons, badge-and-visitor screening, active-shooter lockdown drills at the frequency Joint Commission standards require. A targeted shooting happened on the premises. The breach is the gap between what was required and what was done. The proximate result is a death and an injury that reasonable security would have prevented, or at least made far less likely.
If the 23-year-old shooter turns out to be a current or former ChristianaCare employee — as Chief Campos would not rule out — a second and even more direct theory attaches: negligent hiring, retention, training, and supervision. The hospital would have placed this person in proximity to victims and given him access to a secure facility. Pre-employment screening, ongoing behavioral monitoring, de-escalation training, EAP response, and post-termination access revocation are all potential failures. Healthcare workplace-violence statistics are well-documented. The Joint Commission, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the IAHSS — the International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety — all publish standards a hospital was required to follow.
The Other Theories of Liability You Should Know About
Negligent security is the spine of the case, but it is not the only bone. Three more theories belong on the table from day one.
Negligent access control. If the shooter entered through an employee badge that was not deactivated upon termination, through a propped service entrance, or by tailgating an authorized person past a checkpoint, the hospital is directly liable for the access-control failure. Badge-system audit trails are critical evidence, and the audit logs are exactly the kind of record that is auto-purged within weeks if no one demands preservation. The preservation letter we send within the first 48 hours freezes those records before they disappear.
Negligent infliction of emotional distress for the lockdown survivors. Delaware recognizes NIED for bystanders in the zone of danger and for direct victims of violent crime who suffer serious emotional trauma. Hospital staff and patients who were locked down during the SWAT sweep — including anyone who was barricaded inside for hours while a shooter was in the building — are potential NIED claimants, particularly if they require ongoing mental-health treatment. We will discuss PTSD symptoms, the recognized psychological injury that follows a violent event, and the evidence required to support a claim, when you call.
Wrongful death and survival action. The decedent’s estate and the statutory beneficiaries — spouse, children, parents if there is no spouse or children — have a wrongful death claim for the full value of the decedent’s life to them. The personal representative also has a survival claim for the decedent’s pre-death pain, suffering, medical expenses, and lost wages. These are two separate legal vehicles. They run in parallel. They do not overlap.
Delaware’s Wrongful Death and Survival Action Statutes — What the Law Actually Says
Delaware’s wrongful death statute is 10 Del. C. § 3724. The survival statute is 10 Del. C. § 3725. Both give the family two years from the date of death to bring the action. Both are filed by the personal representative of the estate on behalf of the statutory beneficiaries.
The order of beneficiaries is strict and follows Delaware law line by line. First, the surviving spouse. If there is a surviving spouse and children, the spouse and children share. If there is no spouse or child, the parents inherit the claim. If there are no parents, the claim passes to siblings and grandparents. This is not flexible. The statute decides who receives what share, and there is no jury discretion to redistribute.
The damages recoverable under a Delaware wrongful death claim include:
- Economic losses — medical and hospital expenses the decedent incurred between the injury and the death, funeral and burial costs, the projected lifetime lost wages and benefits the decedent would have earned, and the reasonable value of the household services the decedent would have provided.
- Non-economic losses — loss of companionship, guidance, consortium, and the mental anguish suffered by the surviving spouse, children, and parents as a direct result of the death.
Delaware’s survival action under 10 Del. C. § 3725 captures the decedent’s own pre-death damages — the pain and suffering the decedent experienced between the moment of injury and the moment of death, plus the medical bills and lost wages for that period.
The critical limitation you must understand. Delaware is one of only a handful of states where punitive damages are NOT available in a wrongful death action. That is a significant ceiling on the gross recovery. However, punitive damages ARE available in the survival action if the plaintiff’s evidence shows that ChristianaCare’s security failures rose to malice or wanton disregard — and a hospital that had documented knowledge of violent crime on its block, that ignored Joint Commission workplace-violence prevention standards, that failed to deactivate an employee’s badge after termination, and that operated without the security measures a reasonable hospital would have deployed, is a fact pattern that can support a wantonness claim. We will be honest with you about how this distinction affects the case value when we talk.
The Two-Year Deadline You Cannot Afford to Miss
Delaware Code Title 10, Section 3724, gives the personal representative two years from the date of death to file a wrongful death action. Section 3725 gives the same two years for the survival action. The injured survivor has the same two years from the date of injury to file a personal injury action under Delaware’s general statute of limitations.
Two years sounds like a long time. It is not. It will pass while:
- ChristianaCare’s internal review completes and is sent to its attorneys
- The criminal case against the 23-year-old shooter works its way through the Delaware court system
- The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner finalizes the autopsy and the cause-of-death report
- The Delaware State Police and Wilmington PD complete their investigative files
- Insurance adjusters make low settlement offers that the family feels pressure to accept
The legal deadline is two years. The evidence deadline is measured in days. We will come back to that.
Delaware’s Harshest Rule — Pure Contributory Negligence
You need to hear this plainly, because it changes how we will evaluate and try your case.
Delaware is one of only a small number of states that still applies pure contributory negligence as a complete bar to recovery. In almost every other state, if the victim was partly at fault — 20 percent, 40 percent, 60 percent — the recovery is reduced by that percentage. In Delaware, if the decedent is found to be even one percent at fault for what happened, the entire recovery is barred. Nothing. Zero. The case is over before it starts.
This is not a hypothetical risk. Defense counsel in a hospital shooting case will look for any arguable basis to assign even minimal fault to the decedent — Did the decedent see the shooter and fail to retreat? Did the decedent choose to come to a hospital in a high-crime area? Did the decedent fail to take some precaution the defense can characterize as unreasonable? If the defense can persuade a Delaware jury that the decedent was 1 percent at fault, the family walks away with nothing.
This is why vetting the facts before filing is critical, and why you need a trial team that understands how to present a Delaware case to a Delaware jury in a way that preempts the contributory-negligence attack. We build the case to keep that door shut from the very first filing. We prepare the evidence, the experts, and the witness story to leave the defense no room to plant the 1 percent flag.
The Evidence That Disappears in Days — and What We Do to Stop It
You have read this far. This is the section that will decide whether your case survives. We are going to be specific, because the clock is real and the records are about to be destroyed.
Hospital CCTV and video surveillance footage. The cameras covering the 500 block entrance, the lobby, the emergency department, the ground floor, the elevators, the stairwells, and the parking areas captured the shooter’s entry method, his time inside the building, and any warning behavior in the hours and days before. Most hospital systems overwrite CCTV on a 7-to-30-day rolling loop. If we do not serve a litigation-hold letter today, the footage that proves what happened and what the security response looked like may be gone before you finish reading this page. The preservation letter goes out the day you call. We do not wait for the insurance adjuster to pick up the phone.
Employee badge and access-control system audit logs. The EED, HID, or Lenel system records who swiped in, at what door, at what time. The audit trail proves whether the shooter used a current employee badge, a deactivated badge, a shared badge, or tailgated through an unsecured door. These logs are often auto-purged within weeks. We send a preservation demand to the IT director and the security director within 48 hours.
The ChristianaCare HR file on the shooter. If the shooter is a current or former employee, the HR file contains the background check, references, performance reviews, disciplinary actions, EAP records, prior complaints, weapons-policy acknowledgments, and termination documentation. This file is the spine of the negligent-hiring, retention, training, and supervision claim. It is also exactly the file the hospital is most likely to claim privilege over. We obtain it through a Delaware Superior Court subpoena or an anticipated-litigation records-preservation demand before routine destruction schedules purge it.
Hospital incident reports, OSHA 300 logs, Joint Commission survey reports, and prior workplace-violence reports for the last five years. These are the documents that establish foreseeability — the prior similar incidents and known risk that was not mitigated. They are the foundation of the punitive-damages claim in the survival action. They are the documents ChristianaCare is most likely to claim attorney-client privilege over. We require in-house counsel to certify completeness under penalty of spoliation.
Wilmington PD, New Castle County PD, Delaware State Police, and FBI Baltimore investigative files. The 911 audio, dispatch logs, body camera footage, scene photographs, ballistic reports, and witness statements establish the shooter’s identity, motive, weapon, and whether the shooter was a known threat that was not reported to or addressed by the hospital. These records are obtainable through Delaware’s Freedom of Information Act under 29 Del. C. § 10001, which requires agency response within statutory windows. We file the FOIA request immediately and request preservation of the underlying investigative file before routine purging.
Visitor management system logs, patient admission records for the day, and ED triage records. These records identify witnesses, patients present during the lockdown, and the timeline of events for NIED claimants. Visitor data is often purged within 30 to 90 days.
Hospital radio traffic, PA announcements, lockdown drill history, and active-shooter training records for staff. These establish whether the hospital’s actual response met its own protocols and industry standards — Run, Hide, Fight, the standard taught in every active-shooter training program in American healthcare.
ChristianaCare’s general liability, excess, and umbrella insurance policies, including any violence or assault coverage endorsement. Hospital systems typically carry $10 million to $50 million in general liability and umbrella coverage, with separate violence-coverage endorsements. Identifying the available coverage pool is half the value of the case. We send a policy disclosure demand to the broker and insurer immediately.
Cell phone records of the shooter and the decedent. These establish the relationship between them — was this a domestic-violence incident the hospital should have prevented on its premises — and the timeline. Requires a preservation letter to the carriers and a court order for content.
ATF trace and serial-number history of the firearm. The trace proves chain of custody and may identify a straw purchaser or a prior owner. Relevant to the negligent-hiring claim if the shooter was a prohibited possessor at the time of hire. The ATF report will be generated but takes weeks; the preservation request goes in now.
What the Insurer and the Hospital Are Doing Right Now — and How We Counter Every Play
You are about to be contacted by people who sound like they are on your side and are not. Here is what is coming, and here is what we do about it.
Play one — the sympathetic statement. Within 24 to 72 hours, an insurance adjuster or a ChristianaCare representative will call. The voice will be warm. The voice will say they are “just checking in” or “want to help in any way we can.” The call is, in almost every case, a recorded statement designed to be played back later to impeach you. The counter is simple: you decline the call, refer all communications to us, and never give a recorded statement without counsel present. We tell the adjuster in writing that all future contact goes through our office.
Play two — the “active investigation” delay. ChristianaCare’s lawyers will tell you they cannot discuss the case while the criminal investigation is pending. They will use the Wilmington PD and FBI investigation as a shield against civil discovery. The counter is the civil discovery process itself — we file the complaint, we serve the Rule 34 production demand, we notice the Rule 30(b)(6) deposition of ChristianaCare, and we compel the production of security policies, prior incident reports, training records, badge audits, and risk assessments. The criminal case and the civil case run in parallel. The hospital does not get to use the criminal case to suppress the civil case.
Play three — the HIPAA wall. The hospital’s counsel will tell you HIPAA prevents them from sharing information about the decedent or the incident. HIPAA does not prevent the hospital from talking to its own lawyers and risk management about its own security failures. The wall is a litigation posture, not a law. We pierce it through discovery.
Play four — privilege over internal risk assessments. The hospital’s most damaging documents are the pre-incident security risk assessments, the prior violent-incident reports, and the OSHA 300 logs. These are the documents that show ChristianaCare knew about the risk and failed to act. The hospital will claim attorney-client privilege and work product. The counter is the foreseeable-litigation argument — if prior incidents made future violence foreseeable, the hospital’s anticipation of civil claims predates this shooting, and the privilege cannot be used to suppress evidence of what the hospital knew and when. We force production through motion practice in the New Castle County Superior Court.
Play five — the “lone wolf” narrative. The defense will say the shooter was a single disturbed individual acting alone, and the hospital could not have predicted or prevented the act. The counter is the foreseeability evidence — the crime statistics for the 500 block of West 14th Street, the prior security incidents on and near the campus, the Joint Commission standards the hospital was supposed to follow, the OSHA guidance the hospital was supposed to implement. The hospital’s security obligations exist regardless of the shooter’s mental state. A reasonable hospital in this neighborhood, with this prior incident history, would have done more.
Play six — the quick lowball offer. Within weeks, the insurer may approach with an offer framed as “closure” or “so the family does not have to relive this in court.” The offer will be a fraction of the case value. The counter is the preservation letter, the expert engagement, the discovery, and the willingness to try the case in New Castle County. We do not let an adjuster set the number before the evidence is in. We are familiar with the tactics insurance companies use to deny and lowball claims, because Lupe Peña worked on that side of the table for years.
Play seven — blame the victim. In a pure contributory negligence state like Delaware, the defense will look for any arguable basis to assign 1 percent fault to the decedent. The counter is the case we build from day one — the evidence, the experts, and the witness preparation designed to keep that door shut. We do not file a Delaware wrongful death case unless we are confident the evidence forecloses the contributory-negligence attack.
How Much Is This Case Worth — An Honest Conversation About Value
You deserve an honest answer to this question, and you deserve the answer before you sign anything.
For the wrongful death and survival claims combined, before considering punitive exposure on the survival action, a targeted hospital shooting case in Delaware with a deceased victim, on a documented high-crime block where security was demonstrably inadequate, and where the shooter may have been a current or former ChristianaCare employee, generally falls in a range of $1.5 million to $7.5 million. Cases with young decedents, dependent minor children, or documented prior warning signs can push above $10 million. Cases with elderly decedents and no dependents trend toward the low end. The value is driven by the decedent’s age, earning capacity, the number of statutory beneficiaries, and the strength of the foreseeability evidence.
The injured survivor’s claim is a separate, additive value pool of $250,000 to $3 million, depending on the permanence of the injury, the cost of future medical care, and the strength of the NIED claim for the hours spent locked down during the SWAT sweep.
Two factors set the ceiling in Delaware. First, the no-punitive-damages rule in wrongful death. Second, the pure contributory negligence bar — a 1 percent finding of fault against the decedent eliminates the entire recovery. We will be straight with you about how these two rules affect the realistic value of your case when we evaluate the facts.
What we will not do is quote you a number to get you to sign a retainer. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. Every case is its own case, and yours deserves to be evaluated on its own evidence. We will tell you what we see when we look at the facts.
What To Do — and What NOT To Do — in the Next 72 Hours
This is the list we give every family in the first conversation. Follow it before you call us if you can. Follow it after you call us if you cannot.
Do preserve everything you have. Save every text message, every email, every photo, every voicemail. Save the badge or visitor pass if you still have it. Save the clothing you were wearing if it has not been washed. Save the names and phone numbers of every witness — staff, patients, visitors, anyone who was in the building.
Do not speak to law enforcement without us present. Wilmington PD, Delaware State Police, and the FBI will want to interview the family. We are not telling you to refuse. We are telling you to have a lawyer in the room first. Statements made in the shock of the first 72 hours are often incomplete, sometimes inaccurate, and always quotable. We prepare you for the interview so the statement reflects what actually happened.
Do not speak to ChristianaCare’s representatives, risk management, or insurance adjusters. Refer all calls to us. Do not sign anything. Do not accept any check. Do not agree to any meeting. The hospital’s lawyers are already working. Your protection starts with the decision to let us handle every contact.
Do not post on social media. Defense investigators are already mining Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X for anything that can be used to attack the decedent’s character, the family’s grief, or the survivor’s recovery. A single post can be twisted into a contributory-negligence argument. In Delaware, that argument can end the case.
Do apply for the Delaware Victims’ Compensation Assistance Program. Under 11 Del. C. § 9001, the Delaware Victims’ Compensation Assistance Program provides financial assistance for funeral costs, medical expenses, mental health counseling, and lost wages to victims of violent crime and their families. This is a separate program from the civil case. The application does not affect your right to sue. We help you file.
Do connect with grief counseling and trauma support. The acute trauma of an active-shooter event in a hospital does not resolve on its own. The Delaware Victims’ Compensation Program can fund mental health treatment. We connect you with victim advocates who have walked other families through this.
Do call us. The preservation letter cannot wait. The FOIA request cannot wait. The badge-log audit-trail demand cannot wait. You do not need to have all the answers before you call. You need to make the call so the clock starts working for you instead of against you. The consultation is free. There is no fee unless we win. Call 1-888-ATTY-911.
Why Our Firm — A Texas-Based Trial Team Taking On a Delaware Case
You may be reading this and wondering why a Texas-based law firm is writing about a Delaware hospital shooting. It is a fair question, and we will answer it directly.
The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC — the firm behind Attorney911 — has been built to fight large institutional defendants. Ralph Manginello has practiced since 1998, was admitted to the State Bar of Texas in 1998, and has been admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas for federal trial practice for more than two decades. He has 27-plus years of courtroom experience, including the BP Texas City refinery explosion litigation. He is a former journalist who became a trial lawyer because he could not stop asking the question “why.” He fights cases the way he played point guard on a championship team — with the discipline to run the play, the nerve to take the shot, and the refusal to lose the game in the fourth quarter.
Lupe Peña is the second part of the answer to the question. Lupe is a former insurance defense attorney who spent years inside a national insurance defense firm — in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue people exactly like you. He knows how Colossus-style settlement systems undervalue injuries. He knows how defense firms build their files. He knows the playbook ChristianaCare’s lawyers are running against you right now, because he ran it himself. Now he runs it in reverse, for the families the playbook was designed to defeat. Lupe serves families fully in Spanish. Hablamos Español.
Our firm has recovered more than $50 million for families since 1998, and we have built a trial practice on cases like the one you are facing now — institutional negligence, catastrophic injury, and wrongful death against defendants with more lawyers and more money than the average family. We have the resources to take on a large healthcare system. We have the trial experience to try the case in a Delaware courtroom if that is what it takes. We associate Delaware local counsel as required by the rules of professional conduct and the courts of Delaware. The team that works your case will know Delaware law, Delaware procedure, and the New Castle County Superior Court where the case will be venued.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. We will tell you what we see when we evaluate your case. If we are not the right fit, we will tell you that too, and we will help you find the lawyer who is.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who can file a wrongful death claim in Delaware after the Wilmington Hospital shooting?
The personal representative of the decedent’s estate files the wrongful death claim on behalf of the statutory beneficiaries. Delaware law follows a strict priority order for beneficiaries under 10 Del. C. § 3724: first the surviving spouse, then the children, then the parents if there is no spouse or child, and then the siblings and grandparents if there are no primary beneficiaries. If there is no will and no personal representative has been appointed, the family can petition the Register of Wills in New Castle County for the appointment. We handle the appointment and the filing.
How long do we have to file a wrongful death or survival action in Delaware?
Two years from the date of death for the wrongful death claim under 10 Del. C. § 3724, and two years from the date of death for the survival action under 10 Del. C. § 3725. The injured survivor has the same two years from the date of injury to file a personal injury action. The two years sounds like a long time, but the evidence you need to win — the CCTV, the badge logs, the HR file, the risk assessments — disappears in days and weeks. The two-year clock is the legal deadline. The evidence clock is the one that decides the case.
What is Delaware’s contributory negligence rule and how does it affect our case?
Delaware is one of only a small number of states that still applies pure contributory negligence. If the decedent is found to be even 1 percent at fault for what happened, the entire recovery is barred. Defense counsel in a hospital shooting case will look for any arguable basis to assign even minimal fault to the decedent. We build the case from day one to keep that door shut — the evidence, the experts, the witness preparation designed to foreclose the contributory-negligence attack. We do not file a case unless we are confident the evidence closes that door.
Can we sue ChristianaCare if the shooter was a patient or visitor, not an employee?
Yes. The negligent security theory does not require that the shooter be an employee. The theory is that the hospital owed a duty of reasonable care to protect people on its premises from foreseeable criminal acts, the hospital had actual or constructive knowledge of the risk, and the hospital failed to deploy reasonable security measures. The employment relationship adds a second theory — negligent hiring, retention, training, and supervision — but it is not required for the negligent security claim to proceed. A patient, a visitor, or a stranger who walks in off the street and commits a shooting can still give rise to hospital liability if the security was inadequate and the risk was foreseeable.
What if the shooter has no money? Can we still recover?
The 23-year-old shooter is the primary criminal defendant. He will also be a civil defendant. Civil recovery against him personally is limited by collectability, and a 23-year-old with no visible assets may not have insurance or assets to satisfy a judgment. However, a civil judgment against the shooter still matters. It is a piece of the insurance bad-faith leverage against any homeowners or rental policy in his name at the time of the incident, and it is the foundation for pursuing the institutional defendants — ChristianaCare and any private security contractor — whose insurance coverage is the realistic source of recovery. Hospital systems typically carry $10 million to $50 million in general liability and umbrella coverage with separate violence-coverage endorsements.
Should we talk to the insurance adjuster who has already called?
No. Refer the call to us. The adjuster’s friendly “we just want to help” call is, in almost every case, a recorded statement designed to be played back later to impeach you. We tell the adjuster in writing that all future contact goes through our office, and we handle the communications from that point forward. This is one of the most important decisions you will make in the first 72 hours. A single recorded statement, made in the shock of the moment, can be used to assign 1 percent fault to the decedent and end the case in Delaware. Do not give the statement. Call us first.
Can we get punitive damages in Delaware?
Not in the wrongful death claim. Delaware is one of the few states that does not allow punitive damages in a wrongful death action, which sets a ceiling on the gross recovery. Punitive damages ARE available in the survival action under 10 Del. C. § 3725 if the evidence shows that ChristianaCare’s security failures rose to malice or wanton disregard — and a hospital that had documented knowledge of violent crime on its block, that ignored Joint Commission workplace-violence prevention standards, that failed to deactivate an employee’s badge after termination, and that operated without the security measures a reasonable hospital would have deployed, is a fact pattern that can support a wantonness claim. We will be honest with you about how this distinction affects the realistic case value when we evaluate the facts.
What about the survivor who was injured but not killed?
The injured survivor has a separate personal injury claim against ChristianaCare for the full economic damages (medical, lost wages, future care) and the full non-economic damages (pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life). If the injuries are permanent, the damages include the cost of future medical care and the loss of future earning capacity. The survivor may also have a negligent infliction of emotional distress claim for the hours spent locked down during the SWAT sweep. The value of the survivor’s claim is in addition to the wrongful death claim and is evaluated on its own facts. We handle both claims together to make sure the evidence and the expert work support both.
How long will the case take?
For a case of this complexity, the realistic timeline is 18 to 36 months from filing to resolution, depending on how ChristianaCare fights the discovery, how the criminal case progresses, and whether the case settles or goes to trial. Most cases of this type resolve in mediation after the expert exchange and the key depositions, typically 9 to 12 months after the complaint is filed. We will give you a realistic timeline at the first consultation and update it as the case progresses.
What is the first thing I should do right now?
Call us at 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free. There is no fee unless we win. We send the preservation letter the same day. The preservation letter to ChristianaCare, the Delaware FOIA request to the investigative agencies, and the audit-trail demand to the badge-system vendor are the three documents that decide whether the evidence is still there when we need it. The call takes 20 minutes. The preservation work cannot wait another day. Hablamos Español. We are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Free, Confidential Case Review — Call 1-888-ATTY-911
If you lost a family member in the June 16, 2026 shooting at Wilmington Hospital, or if you were injured or locked down during the incident, you have rights under Delaware law. The hospital system can be held accountable. The evidence is disappearing. The clock is running.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911 for a free, confidential consultation. There is no fee unless we win. Ralph Manginello brings 27-plus years of courtroom experience to your case. Lupe Peña brings years of insurance-defense insider knowledge and full Spanish-language service for your family. We will tell you what we see when we evaluate the facts. If we are not the right fit, we will tell you that too.
We serve families across Delaware, including Wilmington, New Castle, Newark, Dover, and the surrounding communities. We associate Delaware local counsel as required. We are ready to send the preservation letter, file the Delaware FOIA request, and notice the depositions the day you call. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The page you are reading is legal information, not legal advice for your specific case. Call us. The consultation is free. The clock is real. Hablamos Español. 1-888-ATTY-911.