What You Are Facing Right Now, and What You Can Do About It Today
If you are reading this page, the most likely reason is that you are part of the ChristianaCare family in Wilmington — and on Tuesday, June 16, 2026, a 23-year-old employee walked into the Emergency Department of Wilmington Hospital, in the 500 block of West 14th Street, and shot two of your coworkers, killing one and wounding the other. You may be the parent, spouse, child, or sibling of the person who died. You may be the second victim, recovering from a gunshot wound in a hospital bed somewhere in the region. You may be a hospital guide like Brian Pfeffer — a man who told Action News he was in the ED when the shots rang out, that it was “super intense,” that he was “kind of shaking,” and that “God forbid anyone should have to be a part of that.” Or you may be one of the many caregivers, nurses, techs, registration staff, and security officers who were inside that building when a place you went to heal people became a crime scene.
Whatever your connection, you are now inside a legal process you did not choose and did not ask for. Within hours of the shooting, a claims adjuster from ChristianaCare’s insurance carrier will call you — a friendly voice asking how you are doing, asking you to walk them through what you know, asking for a recorded statement “just to help us process this quickly.” ChristianaCare’s HR will reach out about a meeting. The hospital’s risk-management team will be working the case in parallel with the Wilmington Police Department, the Pennsylvania State Police, the Philadelphia Police Department (because the shooter fled north on I-95 into the Olney section and was arrested around 9:30 p.m. Tuesday), and the Delaware Attorney General’s office. The shooter is in custody, and that is real and significant. But the criminal case will not pay the family’s mortgage. It will not pay for the funeral. It will not replace the income the deceased employee would have earned over the next twenty or thirty years. It will not pay for the second victim’s surgery, physical therapy, lost wages, or PTSD treatment. Those are civil claims, and they are yours.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are trial lawyers. We have spent more than 27 years in courtrooms, including federal court, fighting for families who were failed by the people and institutions that were supposed to protect them. We have recovered more than $50 million for families since 1998. We have handled refinery-explosion litigation, catastrophic brain-injury and amputation cases, and the full range of wrongful-death and premises-liability claims. One of our attorneys, Lupe Peña, spent years working inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where claims like yours are priced, where recorded statements are engineered, where the playbook we are about to teach you was invented. He now uses that playbook for the families on the other side of the table. This page is built to give you the same knowledge a defense team already has about your case. Read it carefully. Then call us at 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free, and there is no fee unless we win.
What We Know About the June 16, 2026 Shooting at Wilmington Hospital
The facts below are drawn from confirmed law-enforcement sources, official statements, and reporting from the scene. We will update this page as additional information becomes available.
On Tuesday afternoon, June 16, 2026, at approximately 3:30 p.m., Wilmington Police officers were called to Wilmington Hospital — a ChristianaCare facility in the 500 block of West 14th Street in Wilmington, Delaware — for a report of gunfire inside the Emergency Department. Law enforcement sources have told reporters that the incident was a “targeted, isolated” event in which one hospital employee shot two other employees inside the facility. The shooter, identified as a 23-year-old male employee, fled the scene in a Toyota RAV4. The hospital was placed on lockdown, and ChristianaCare diverted patients from its Emergency Department during the incident.
One of the two employees who were shot was pronounced dead. The second wounded victim’s condition has not been officially released, and the identities of all parties have not been made public as of the time of this writing. A hospital guide, Brian Pfeffer, was in the Emergency Department at the time of the gunfire and was interviewed by Action News. “It was super intense. I’m kind of shaking,” Pfeffer said. “God forbid anyone should have to be a part of that.” Helicopter footage from Chopper 6 showed people leaving the hospital with their hands up as a large number of police, firefighters, and medics converged on the Emergency Department entrance.
The shooter was tracked across state lines into Philadelphia’s Olney section using License Plate Reader (LPR) technology, and was taken into custody around 9:30 p.m. Tuesday night. Charges and extradition to Delaware are pending. Police towed a Toyota RAV4 from the scene. ChristianaCare said in an emailed statement that the hospital was “taking all appropriate steps to ensure the safety of our patients, caregivers and visitors.”
There are two tracks that will run from this point forward. The first is the criminal case, which is being prosecuted by the Delaware Attorney General’s office. The family of the deceased and the wounded victim have constitutional victim rights, but the State controls the prosecution. The second track is the civil case — wrongful death, survival, premises liability, negligent security, negligent hiring, retention, and supervision — which the family controls through a personal representative appointed by the Delaware Court of Chancery or the New Castle County Superior Court. This page is about the second track, and it is the track that pays.
The Delaware Law That Governs This Case
A hospital shooting that kills an employee and wounds another inside a healthcare facility triggers several distinct bodies of Delaware law, and understanding which statute controls which claim is the difference between a case that pays and a case that dies on a procedural defense. Here is the framework, statute by statute, the way a senior trial lawyer would teach it.
The Delaware Wrongful Death Act — 10 Del. C. § 3724. This is the statute that gives the family of the deceased employee the right to bring a civil action for the death. The claim belongs to the personal representative of the estate — the single person the Delaware court appoints to act for the family in a wrongful-death case. The recoverable damages include loss of services, loss of companionship, loss of guidance, loss of pecuniary support, and the conscious pain and suffering the deceased experienced between the time of injury and the time of death. The statute does not cap non-economic damages in Delaware. There is no damage cap on wrongful death in this state.
The Delaware Survival Statute — 10 Del. C. § 3701. The survival action is the second claim that arises on a death, and Delaware allows it to be brought in the same case as the wrongful-death action. Where the wrongful-death claim belongs to the family for what they lost, the survival claim belongs to the estate for what the deceased lost — pre-death medical expenses, the conscious pain and suffering endured between injury and death, the lost wages between injury and death, and any property damage. Both claims run on a two-year statute of limitations under 10 Del. C. § 8119. For the wrongful-death claim the clock starts on the date of death. For the survival action and for the wounded victim’s personal-injury claim, the clock starts on the date of injury.
The Delaware Wrongful Death Act, 10 Del. C. § 3724, and the Delaware Survival Statute, 10 Del. C. § 3701, operate independently and may be brought in the same civil action. There is no statutory cap on damages under either statute, and Delaware allows punitive damages without statutory cap. The statute of limitations for both wrongful death and personal injury (including survival actions) is two years under 10 Del. C. § 8119.
Modified Comparative Fault — 10 Del. C. § 8132. Delaware is a modified comparative fault jurisdiction with a 51% bar. A plaintiff who is more than 50% at fault recovers nothing. This rule is real and it is part of every case we handle. But for an intentional tort of this severity — a hospital employee walking into the ED and shooting two coworkers — the comparative-fault defense almost never defeats recovery. The eggshell-plaintiff rule and the assumption-of-risk doctrine do not bar recovery for intentional violent acts. The defense will still try to blame the victim for “being in the wrong place,” “not following the security protocol,” or “not securing the door” — and the counter to each of those arguments is that the legal duty to keep the ED safe belonged to ChristianaCare, not to the employee showing up for a shift.
The Workers’ Compensation Bar and the Intentional Tort Exception — 19 Del. C. § 2301 et seq., with § 2304. This is the most important statute on this page for understanding why the case against the hospital is winnable. The Delaware Workers’ Compensation Act is, in general, the exclusive remedy an employee has against his or her employer for a workplace injury — meaning an employee normally cannot sue ChristianaCare for being shot at work. But Section 2304 of the Act contains a narrow exception for an intentional tort by the employer — a deliberate, conscious, and intentional act by the employer that causes injury. The bar is high. But the bar is not a wall, and the analysis is fact-specific. Where discovery shows that ChristianaCare knew about prior threats, prior violence, prior disciplinary issues, prior EAP involvement, or prior red flags involving the shooter — and did not act on that knowledge — the negligent-retention and negligent-hiring claims are exactly the kind of egregious employer conduct that the exception was written to address.
Even where the § 2304 intentional-tort exception does not apply, the family and the wounded victim have a separate path to the hospital: negligent security and premises liability. The hospital is the possessor of the premises, and as possessor it owes a duty of reasonable care to all invitees on the premises — including its own employees — to protect them against foreseeable third-party criminal acts. That is not a workers’ compensation claim. That is a premises-liability claim. The shooter is the third party. The hospital is the defendant. The legal theory is the one a shopping mall or apartment building would face if a violent attack happened on its property. The standard is reasonable care in light of foreseeable risk — and a hospital that operates an Emergency Department in a documented high-crime corridor, that employs a workforce that has been specifically told (per OSHA’s 2016 Guidelines for Preventing Workplace Violence for Healthcare and Social Service Workers) that healthcare workers face elevated assault risk, and that may have known specific facts about the shooter before the day he brought a gun into the ED — has a foreseeability problem it cannot ignore.
The Negligent Security Case Against ChristianaCare
The negligent-security case is the value driver in this litigation. The shooter, a 23-year-old ChristianaCare employee, is the moral and legal cause of the death and the wound. But a 23-year-old employee’s collectible assets are limited. ChristianaCare is a major Delaware health system, self-insured for substantial retentions, with commercial liability coverage that typically runs $1 million to $5 million in primary coverage plus $20 million or more in umbrella coverage. The negligent-security claim is what reaches that coverage.
To win a negligent-security case in Delaware, the family must prove four elements: (1) ChristianaCare owed a duty of reasonable care to protect the deceased and the wounded employee against foreseeable third-party criminal acts; (2) ChristianaCare breached that duty; (3) the breach was a proximate cause of the death and the wound; and (4) the family suffered damages. The first two elements are where the case lives or dies, and they turn on what the hospital knew and when it knew it.
Foreseeability is the central battle. The defense will argue that the shooting was a “lone wolf” act that no employer could have predicted. The answer is the documented record. Wilmington’s West Side is a documented high-crime corridor. The Emergency Department of an urban hospital is, by industry consensus, one of the most violence-prone workplaces in America. The American Hospital Association has reported escalating assault rates in emergency departments nationally for years. OSHA published its Guidelines for Preventing Workplace Violence for Healthcare and Social Service Workers in 2016, and the document is now the industry standard of care — it tells hospital employers in plain language that healthcare workers face a recognized hazard, that engineering controls (panic buttons, badge-access systems, controlled entry points, metal detection, security staffing levels, behavioral-health screening) are required, and that administrative controls (incident reporting, threat-assessment teams, post-incident debriefs, training) are required. The Joint Commission — the body that accredits hospitals — has issued Environment of Care standards (EC.02.01.01 and EC.04.01.01) and Sentinel Event policies on workplace violence and active-shooter preparedness. CMS Conditions of Participation (42 CFR 482) require hospitals to maintain a safe environment. The question is not whether ChristianaCare knew that ED violence was a recognized hazard. The question is what specific facts ChristianaCare knew about this specific shooter before June 16, 2026.
The negligent-hiring, negligent-retention, and negligent-supervision claims are the second front. Discovery will focus on the shooter’s complete employment file — the application, the background check, the references, the disciplinary records, the performance reviews, the prior complaints, the EAP records, the mental-health accommodations, any prior threats (verbal, written, electronic), any prior restraining orders or Protection From Abuse orders, and any history of behavioral flags that HR, security, or supervisors knew about. The negligent-hiring and negligent-retention theories ask one question: did the hospital place or keep this employee in proximity to coworkers when it knew, or should have known, that he posed a danger? If the answer is yes — and that is what we will investigate — the hospital’s conduct becomes the second cause of the death, alongside the shooter himself.
Prior incidents are the pattern evidence. ChristianaCare maintains workplace-violence incident logs, prior ED security assessments, threat-assessment team records, “Code Silver” / active-shooter drill records, and post-incident reports from any prior violence on or near the ED. Those records are discoverable. The litigation-hold letter we send on day one specifically requests preservation of every category. If the hospital’s own records show a pattern of escalating violence, a pattern of inadequate security responses, a pattern of threat-assessment failures, or a pattern of supervisor warnings that were ignored, the negligent-security case moves from arguable to strong. If the hospital has destroyed or failed to preserve any of those records, we will seek spoliation sanctions — adverse-inference instructions, monetary penalties, and, in egregious cases, default judgment.
The Wrongful Death Claim: Who Can File, What It Recovers, and How It Moves
Under 10 Del. C. § 3724, a wrongful-death action in Delaware is brought by the personal representative of the deceased’s estate. “Personal representative” means the executor or administrator appointed by the Delaware Court of Chancery or, where the estate is small enough, by the Register of Wills. The personal representative acts on behalf of the statutory beneficiaries — surviving spouse, children, and parents of the deceased. If there is no will, the Court of Chancery appoints an administrator. If there is a will, the executor named in the will applies for letters testamentary. The appointment of a personal representative is the first legal step the family must take, and we handle the entire appointment process as part of the case.
The recoverable damages in a Delaware wrongful-death action include:
- Funeral and burial expenses. Documented out-of-pocket costs.
- Lost earnings and earning capacity. The decedent’s projected income over a working lifetime, reduced to present value by an economist. For a 20-50 year old hospital employee, the loss-of-earnings calculation can range from $1.5 million to $5 million or more, depending on age, position, specialty, benefits trajectory, and expected raises.
- Loss of household services. The market value of the cooking, cleaning, childcare, eldercare, home maintenance, and financial management the decedent would have provided.
- Loss of pension and retirement contributions. The employer-side pension contributions, 401(k) match, and Social Security benefits the decedent would have earned.
- Loss of companionship, guidance, and consortium. The non-economic loss to the spouse, children, and parents. Delaware does not cap these damages, and juries in workplace-violence cases have historically awarded $2 million to $8 million or more for the loss of a working spouse or parent.
- The decedent’s conscious pain and suffering between injury and death. This element overlaps with the survival action and is recoverable under both statutes.
The case value depends heavily on the decedent’s age, position, and earning trajectory. A 25-year-old registered nurse with 40 years of projected earnings has a very different damages profile than a 60-year-old administrative employee nearing retirement. We retain a forensic economist early in every wrongful-death case to model the loss precisely, and we work backward from the model to build the proof — employment records, performance reviews, salary history, benefits summaries, tax returns, and testimony from supervisors and colleagues about the decedent’s career trajectory.
The Survival Action: The Other Claim That Runs Alongside Wrongful Death
Delaware’s survival statute, 10 Del. C. § 3701, allows the estate to recover the damages the deceased could have recovered had he lived. The survival action is the estate’s claim — it belongs to the estate and is brought by the personal representative — and it captures losses the wrongful-death claim does not.
- Pre-death medical expenses. The cost of the emergency response, the ED treatment, the surgical intervention, the ICU stay, and any other care between the moment of injury and the moment of death. ChristianaCare and its insurance carrier will pay some of these bills under workers’ compensation or health insurance — but those payments are subject to subrogation and lien resolution, and they do not reduce the family’s recovery. The bills are part of the damages; the question is who pays them and from which source.
- Pre-death lost wages. The income the deceased would have earned between the moment of injury and the moment of death. This is usually a smaller number than the lifetime-loss calculation, but it is real, documented, and recoverable.
- Pre-death conscious pain and suffering. This is the largest non-economic element of the survival claim. A gunshot victim who is conscious in the ED for any period of time before dying has experienced terror, pain, and conscious suffering. Delaware juries take this element seriously, and the proof comes from medical records, the treating nurses and physicians, and any statements the victim made before death.
The survival action and the wrongful-death action are brought in the same complaint, pleaded in separate counts, and tried together. The total recovery is the sum of both, less any applicable credits. Delaware law does not cap either claim.
Why the Workers’ Compensation Bar Does Not End This Case
The first thing ChristianaCare and its insurance carrier will tell the family is that workers’ compensation is the only available remedy — that the family cannot sue the hospital, period. This is a half-truth. It is true that the Delaware Workers’ Compensation Act, 19 Del. C. § 2301 et seq., is the exclusive remedy an employee normally has against an employer for a workplace injury. It is also true that Section 2304 of the Act contains a narrow exception for an intentional tort by the employer — a deliberate, conscious, and intentional act by the employer that causes injury. The bar is high. We will not tell the family it is low. But the bar is not a wall, and the analysis is fact-driven.
More importantly, even where the § 2304 exception does not apply, the family has a separate path to the hospital that does not run through workers’ compensation: the negligent-security and premises-liability claim. The hospital is the possessor of the premises. As possessor, it owes a duty of reasonable care to all invitees — patients, visitors, and its own employees — to protect against foreseeable third-party criminal acts. The shooter is the third party. The hospital’s failure to provide reasonable security — metal detection, controlled entry, panic buttons, behavioral-health screening, threat-assessment follow-through, supervisor response to prior red flags — is the breach. That claim is a premises-liability claim, not a workers’ compensation claim, and the two bodies of law operate independently.
There is a third path as well. If discovery shows that the shooter used employer-provided resources — a uniform, a badge, an access code, a vehicle, a phone, a scheduling system, an email account — in furtherance of the attack, the conduct begins to look less like a purely personal frolic and more like a foreseeable misuse of the employment relationship. Each of these factual theories is developed in discovery, and the answer to whether any of them pierces the workers’ compensation bar is a question we resolve on the facts, not on a label.
What this means in plain language: the family should not accept the workers’ compensation answer as final. The compensation answer is real, and we will work with it, and we will make sure the family receives every weekly check and every medical bill payment the statute provides. But the workers’ compensation answer is not the end of the question. The end of the question is whether ChristianaCare’s conduct — the security failures, the hiring decisions, the retention decisions, the supervisory decisions, the response to prior red flags — was a separate, independent cause of the death. If the answer is yes, and the discovery supports it, the family has a wrongful-death and survival case against the hospital that runs alongside whatever workers’ compensation benefits the statute provides.
The Evidence Clock: What Exists, Who Holds It, and How Fast It Disappears
Evidence in a hospital-shooting case dies on a clock measured in days, not years. The single most important fact about the evidence in this case is that almost every category of proof sits in the hands of the defendant — ChristianaCare — and the defendant is already running an internal investigation designed to control the narrative. The only way to level the playing field is to send a litigation-hold letter immediately and to file emergency motions if any category of evidence is at risk of destruction.
Here is the evidence, the holder, and the clock, category by category.
Hospital CCTV / surveillance footage from the ED, the lobby, the parking areas, and all entry and exit points. Held by ChristianaCare and its security contractor. Will show the shooter’s movements into the building, into the ED, the shooting itself, the response times of security and police, the evacuation, and any prior reconnaissance. Overwrite cycle: 7 to 30 days for most hospital systems. The litigation-hold letter must be sent today, and it must specifically request preservation of all surveillance footage from June 16, 2026 and from a defined look-back period (typically 30 to 90 days) so that any prior visits by the shooter to the ED are preserved.
ChristianaCare incident reports, security logs, badge-access records, and ED triage logs from June 16, 2026. Held by ChristianaCare. Will establish the timeline, who was on shift, the response times, the prior incident history. The litigation-hold letter must identify each of these categories by name.
The shooter’s complete employment file. Held by ChristianaCare HR. Includes the application, the background check, references, disciplinary records, performance reviews, prior complaints, EAP records, mental-health accommodations, and any prior threat reports. This is the smoking-gun category for the negligent-hiring and negligent-retention theory. Clock: HR files are often “lawyered up” within days of a major incident, and the file may be “sealed” for the criminal investigation — but civil discovery rights attach independently, and the file must be preserved.
License Plate Reader (LPR) data and Philadelphia Police Department arrest records. Held by Philadelphia PD, Pennsylvania State Police, and the LPR system operators. Documents the shooter’s flight path on I-95, the time elapsed between the shooting and the arrest, the route, and any potential for bystander endangerment along the way — evidence that goes directly to punitive damages and to the question of whether the hospital’s ED lockdown response was adequate. Clock: LPR retention varies by operator; PPD records are subject to Pennsylvania Right-to-Know and Delaware FOIA.
Police body-camera footage from Wilmington PD, Pennsylvania State Police, and Philadelphia PD. First-responder accounts, scene documentation, any spontaneous statements by the shooter at the time of arrest. Clock: must be requested via Delaware FOIA and PA Right-to-Know within 30 days; subject to active criminal investigation restrictions.
911 recordings, dispatch logs, and radio traffic. Held by the Wilmington Department of Public Safety and the Delaware Emergency Management Agency. Will establish the timeline of response, the dispatch priority, and any pre-shooting 911 calls that may indicate prior threats. Clock: 30-day retention on most dispatch systems; request immediately.
The Toyota RAV4. In Philadelphia PD custody. The vehicle is a piece of physical evidence — fingerprints, DNA, the gun, ballistic evidence, the shooter’s belongings, and the vehicle’s own event data. Clock: vehicles in police custody are typically processed within weeks and then released; chain-of-custody inspection must be moved on quickly.
The shooter’s cell phone records. Texts, calls, location data, social-media posts. The motive, the planning, any prior threats, any coordination. Clock: requires a search warrant or subpoena; many providers purge data after 30 to 90 days.
ChristianaCare workplace-violence incident logs, prior ED security assessments, threat-assessment team records, and “Code Silver” / active-shooter drill records. This is the pattern-evidence category at the heart of the negligent-security claim. The litigation-hold letter must specifically request preservation of all workplace-violence data, threat assessments, security audits, and risk analyses from a defined multi-year look-back period (typically three to five years).
Brian Pfeffer’s account and the accounts of every ED staff member who was on shift on June 16, 2026. Eyewitness accounts of the shooter’s pre-shooting behavior, the time elapsed before the first shot, the security response, the evacuation, and the immediate aftermath. Also supports the bystander NIED claims. Clock: witness memories fade; statements to ChristianaCare’s insurer and HR need to be captured early by counsel, not by the defendant’s investigator.
ChristianaCare’s insurance policies — commercial general liability, umbrella, and any professional-liability coverage that might respond to a negligent-security claim. Determines the depth of the available insurance recovery. Clock: 60-90 days for production in discovery; can be moved for early production.
The Insurance Adjuster Playbook — and How to Beat It
The defense playbook is not complicated. It is, however, relentless, and it is already running. The play has three names, and the counter to each play has a name too.
Play 1: The Friendly Check-In Call. Within 48 hours of the shooting, a claims adjuster from ChristianaCare’s commercial general liability carrier will call the family. The voice will be warm. The adjuster will say they are “just calling to check in,” that they want to “make sure the family is okay,” that they want to “walk through what happened just to make sure we understand.” The call is being recorded. The adjuster is trained to ask open-ended questions that elicit statements the adjuster can later use — that the family member “doesn’t really know what happened yet,” that they “didn’t see the shooter do anything threatening in the days before,” that the deceased “had been stressed at work lately.” Every one of those statements can be deployed in discovery and at trial. The counter to Play 1 is simple: do not give a recorded statement to the insurance adjuster. Refer the adjuster to counsel. If you have not retained counsel yet, say “I will call you back after I speak with a lawyer,” and then call us at 1-888-ATTY-911.
Play 2: The Sympathy Payment with a Release. ChristianaCare’s HR or risk-management team will offer the family a “memorial” or “sympathy” payment — sometimes called a “condolence” payment — within the first weeks. The amount is usually modest: a few thousand dollars to cover funeral expenses, or a one-time payment framed as help with immediate needs. The release is the point. A standard sympathy-payment release waives the right to pursue a future wrongful-death or survival claim against the hospital. The family signs it because they are grieving, because they need the money, and because they do not yet know the value of the claim they are giving up. The counter to Play 2: do not sign a release without counsel review. If the hospital offers money before the family has a lawyer, the hospital is not offering the money for the family’s benefit — the hospital is offering the money to limit its own exposure. We can evaluate the offer, negotiate a much larger one, or file the wrongful-death and survival case without ever signing the release.
Play 3: The Social-Media Mine. The defense will subpoena the deceased’s social-media accounts, the family’s social-media accounts, and the wounded victim’s social-media accounts. Every post, every photo, every comment becomes comparative-fault material in a modified-comparative-fault state like Delaware. A photo of the deceased holding a beer at a cookout becomes “evidence” of alcohol use. A post by the wounded victim about stress becomes “evidence” that the injury was pre-existing. A family member’s angry post about the hospital becomes “evidence” of bias. The counter to Play 3 is to stop posting. Do not discuss the case on Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, or any other platform. Set accounts to private. Do not accept new friend requests from people you do not know. Do not allow family members to post on the deceased’s behalf. Anything you put online can and will be used against you.
There is a fourth play that does not get a name but runs constantly: ChristianaCare’s risk-management team will begin a parallel internal investigation within hours of the shooting. That investigation is designed to find facts helpful to the defense — that the shooter was a “lone wolf,” that there were no prior threats, that the security protocols were industry-standard, that the response was immediate and appropriate. The defense will not share the results of that investigation with the family. The counter to this fourth play is to run our own investigation in parallel — preservation letters, witness interviews conducted by counsel, expert retention, and independent record-gathering — and to put the hospital’s investigation in front of a jury as exactly what it is: a defense investigation paid for by the defense.
The First 30 Days: What Families and the Wounded Employee Should Do
The actions the family takes in the first 30 days will determine the strength of the case more than anything that happens in the next 30 months. Here is the checklist.
- Day 1: Retain counsel. The single most important decision the family will make. The consultation is free, there is no fee unless we win, and the firm handles the entire case from preservation letter to trial. Call 1-888-ATTY-911.
- Day 1-2: Do not give a recorded statement to any insurance adjuster, HR representative, or ChristianaCare risk-management employee. Refer all inquiries to counsel. If a meeting has been scheduled, cancel it until counsel is present.
- Day 1-3: Preserve all physical evidence in the family’s possession — the decedent’s phone, the decedent’s work badge, the decedent’s vehicle, any text messages, any voicemails, any social-media screenshots, any photos of the scene if they were taken. Do not delete anything. Do not “clean up” the phone.
- Day 1-7: Our firm sends the litigation-hold letter to ChristianaCare’s general counsel and corporate risk-management team. The letter identifies every category of evidence that must be preserved — CCTV, employment files, security logs, threat-assessment records, “Code Silver” drill records, prior incident reports, badge-access logs, ED triage logs, and the shooter’s complete personnel file. The letter puts ChristianaCare on formal notice of spoliation liability.
- Day 7-14: We retain the expert team — a hospital-security expert, a workplace-violence-prevention expert, a forensic video analyst, a forensic economist, and a forensic psychiatrist for the wounded victim and the bystander NIED claims. Experts are retained early so that they can begin their analysis in parallel with discovery, not after discovery is complete.
- Day 7-30: We conduct witness interviews — Brian Pfeffer, the wounded victim, the ED staff on shift, supervisors, security personnel, and any family members with relevant information. Witness interviews are conducted by counsel, recorded, and protected by the work-product doctrine.
- Day 14-30: We file the petition to appoint a personal representative in the Delaware Court of Chancery (or, if appropriate, the New Castle County Superior Court). The personal-representative appointment is the legal prerequisite to filing the wrongful-death and survival complaint, and we handle the entire process.
- Day 14-30: We obtain the Wilmington Police Department incident report, the Pennsylvania State Police report, the Philadelphia Police Department arrest report, the 911 recordings, and the LPR data through Delaware FOIA and Pennsylvania Right-to-Know requests.
- Day 30-60: We file the wrongful-death and survival complaint in the New Castle County Superior Court. ChristianaCare is served. The case is now in active litigation, and ChristianaCare is under a court-ordered duty to preserve all evidence.
For the wounded employee, the same checklist applies with one addition: do not give a recorded statement to ChristianaCare HR, the hospital’s workers’ compensation carrier, or any insurance adjuster. The wounded employee’s claim is direct, personal, and not subject to workers’ compensation exclusivity as to the shooter (a third party, not the employer). The wounded employee’s claim against the hospital is for inadequate security, and that claim is developed through the same preservation letter, the same expert team, and the same discovery process.
The Value of Your Case: An Honest Assessment
No attorney can guarantee an outcome, and we will not. What we can do is give the family an honest assessment of the drivers of value in a Delaware hospital-shooting case, the way a senior trial lawyer would explain it to a jury before they walk into the deliberation room.
The death-claim value is built from four numbers: the decedent’s age, the decedent’s earning trajectory, the strength of the negligent-security record, and the availability of punitive damages. For a 20-50 year old hospital employee, the economic-loss calculation alone can range from $1.5 million to $5 million or more. Loss of household services, loss of pension and retirement contributions, and funeral expenses add to that. Non-economic damages (loss of companionship, guidance, and consortium) in Delaware workplace-violence cases have historically ranged from $2 million to $8 million or more, and Delaware does not cap those damages. The survival action adds pre-death conscious pain and suffering, pre-death medical expenses, and pre-death lost wages. Punitive damages are available against the shooter (limited by his assets) and potentially against ChristianaCare if the security failures rise to egregious, wanton conduct — and Delaware allows punitive damages without statutory cap.
Aggregate case value for the death claim against all defendants: $2.5 million to $15 million, with the right facts. The lower end reflects a case with limited negligent-security evidence and modest economic loss. The upper end reflects a case with strong negligent-security evidence, a young decedent with significant earning capacity, and egregious conduct that supports a substantial punitive award. The second victim’s claim adds $750,000 to $3 million, depending on the severity of the wound, the permanence of any injury, the impact on earning capacity, and the strength of the negligent-security theory.
The single biggest driver of value is the negligent-security record against ChristianaCare. A strong negligent-security case — with prior incident logs, prior threat assessments, supervisor warnings that were ignored, security audits that identified gaps that were never closed, and a shooter personnel file that contains red flags ChristianaCare knew or should have known about — is the difference between a recovery measured in the low six figures (limited to the shooter’s collectible assets) and a recovery measured in the seven or eight figures (limited by ChristianaCare’s coverage). We do not know yet which case we have. The discovery will tell us. The litigation-hold letter goes out today because the discovery cannot wait.
Why Venue and Delaware Local Counsel Matter
This case will be filed in the Superior Court of New Castle County, at the courthouse in Wilmington, Delaware. New Castle County is the venue because Wilmington Hospital is in New Castle County, ChristianaCare’s principal place of business is in New Castle County, and the shooting happened in New Castle County. The case is heard by a New Castle County jury, which means a Wilmington-area panel — diverse, urban and suburban, historically receptive to plaintiffs in serious premises-liability cases.
The cross-state dimension of the case adds a procedural layer. The shooter was arrested in Philadelphia. The LPR evidence is in Philadelphia Police Department custody. The Pennsylvania State Police were involved. The criminal case will be prosecuted in Delaware by the Delaware Attorney General, and the extradition process is pending. None of this changes the venue for the civil case. The civil case is a Delaware case, in a Delaware court, against a Delaware defendant, for conduct that occurred in Delaware. The fact that some of the evidence sits in Pennsylvania is a discovery problem, not a venue problem, and it is a problem we know how to solve.
Attorney911 is a Texas-based firm. We are admitted in the Southern District of Texas federal courts and in the Texas state courts. We are not, as of this writing, admitted in Delaware. That does not prevent us from handling this case. It means we associate with Delaware local counsel — a Delaware-licensed attorney who appears in the case alongside us, who handles the Delaware procedural requirements, and who joins the trial team when the case is in a Delaware courtroom. This is the standard model for out-of-state trial firms handling Delaware cases, and it is the model we use for the firm’s work in other states. The Delaware local counsel is a member of the trial team, not a substitute for one.
The choice of firm matters because the insurance carrier and ChristianaCare’s outside counsel are already building their case. They are already preserving the CCTV, the security logs, and the employment file from the defense side. They are already interviewing witnesses from the defense side. They are already retaining their own security experts and their own workplace-violence experts. The family needs a trial team on its side of the table that has spent more than 27 years in courtrooms, including federal court, and that knows how to build a case of this complexity from the preservation letter forward. We are that firm.
What It Costs to Hire Us, and What Happens Next
Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC — handles hospital-shooting, negligent-security, and wrongful-death cases on a contingency fee. That means the family pays nothing up front. There is no retainer. There is no hourly billing. There is no invoice for expert costs or filing fees or deposition transcripts. We advance the costs of the case as it moves forward, and we are repaid out of the recovery. If we do not win, the family owes us nothing for our time or for the costs we advanced. The consultation is free, confidential, and available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The phone number is 1-888-ATTY-911.
When the family calls, the first conversation is with a member of our intake team, not with a call center. We will ask what happened, who is involved, what has ChristianaCare or its insurance carrier said, and what the family needs right now. If the family is ready to move forward, we open the file, send the litigation-hold letter the same day, and begin the preservation work that is the foundation of every case we handle. If the family needs time, we give them time. If we are not the right firm for the case, we will tell them that too. We have built this practice by giving families the straight answer, not the sales pitch, and the only thing we ask in return is the chance to do the work.
For Spanish-speaking families, we provide full legal service in Spanish. Lupe Peña — a former insurance-defense attorney who now fights for the families on the other side of the table — is fully bilingual, and our intake and case management systems are designed to serve Spanish-speaking clients in their language from the first call to the final settlement. Hablamos Español.
Meet the Trial Team
Ralph Manginello is the managing partner of Attorney911. He has been a trial lawyer for more than 27 years, including federal court. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer, and a championship-team point guard before that — a starting guard on the 1989 New England Prep School championship team at Cheshire Academy, where he was inducted into the Athletic Hall of Fame in 2021. He was a journalist at the University of Texas at Austin, and he earned his law degree at South Texas College of Law Houston. He is licensed by the State Bar of Texas (Bar Card 24007597) and admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He founded the firm in 2001 on a single idea: people in a legal emergency deserve someone who picks up the phone. The firm has recovered more than $50 million for families since 1998, has handled BP Texas City refinery-explosion litigation, and has built a record of multi-million-dollar verdicts and settlements in personal injury, wrongful death, and premises liability cases.
Lupe Peña is an associate attorney with the firm and the insider on the team. He spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters decide how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like the one the family is bringing. He knows how carriers code claims. He knows how the recorded-statement call is engineered. He knows how the sympathy-payment release is structured. He knows the playbook because he ran it. Now he runs it in reverse, for the families the playbook was designed to defeat. Lupe grew up in Sugar Land, Texas, with family roots tying back to the King Ranch, and he is a fluent Spanish speaker who serves families fully in Spanish.
More information about the firm, our practice areas, and the attorneys is available on our website. If you would like to review Ralph’s background, you can read more about Ralph Manginello and his trial experience. If you would like to review Lupe’s background, you can read more about Lupe Peña and his work for families on the other side of the insurance playbook. The firm’s full practice-area overview is at our practice areas page, which includes our wrongful death practice and our workplace accident practice.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Can we sue ChristianaCare — the hospital where our loved one worked and was shot?
Yes. The Delaware Workers’ Compensation Act is normally the exclusive remedy an employee has against an employer for a workplace injury, but there are two exceptions. First, Section 2304 of the Act contains a narrow intentional-tort exception for deliberate, conscious, and intentional employer conduct that causes injury. Second — and this is the path most cases actually take — the family has a separate negligent-security and premises-liability claim against ChristianaCare for its failure to provide reasonable security against foreseeable third-party criminal acts. The shooter is a third party. The hospital is the defendant. The legal theory is the one a shopping mall or apartment complex would face if a violent attack happened on its property. The standard is reasonable care in light of foreseeable risk.
2. Who can file the wrongful death case in Delaware?
The personal representative of the deceased’s estate files the case. “Personal representative” is the executor or administrator appointed by the Delaware Court of Chancery. We handle the entire appointment process as part of the case — from the petition through the letters testamentary or letters of administration — and the personal representative then pursues the wrongful-death and survival claims on behalf of the statutory beneficiaries (spouse, children, and parents of the deceased).
3. How long do we have to file?
The Delaware statute of limitations for wrongful death, for survival actions, and for personal injury is two years under 10 Del. C. § 8119. For the wrongful-death claim, the two-year clock runs from the date of death. For the survival action and for the wounded victim’s personal-injury claim, the two-year clock runs from the date of injury. Two years may sound like a long time, but the evidence clock is much shorter than the statute-of-limitations clock — and the preservation work, the witness interviews, and the expert development need to begin now, not two years from now.
4. The shooter is in custody. Why would we need a civil case?
The criminal case punishes the shooter. The civil case recovers the family’s damages. The two cases run on different tracks and produce different outcomes. A criminal conviction does not pay the mortgage, fund the children’s college education, replace the lost pension contributions, or compensate the family for the loss of companionship and guidance. A wrongful-death civil judgment against the shooter is real, but a 23-year-old employee’s collectible assets are limited. The civil case against ChristianaCare — the negligent-security, negligent-hiring, negligent-retention, and premises-liability claims — is the path to the insurance coverage that actually pays.
5. What is our case worth?
It depends on the facts we develop in discovery. For a 20-50 year old hospital employee, the economic-loss calculation alone can range from $1.5 million to $5 million or more, with non-economic damages (loss of companionship, guidance, and consortium) commonly adding $2 million to $8 million in Delaware workplace-violence cases. The survival action adds pre-death conscious pain and suffering, medical expenses, and lost wages. Punitive damages are available without statutory cap. The wounded victim’s claim adds $750,000 to $3 million depending on severity. Aggregate case value for the death claim alone ranges from $2.5 million to $15 million depending on the strength of the negligent-security record, the decedent’s earning trajectory, and the egregiousness of the conduct. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
6. What should we NOT do in the first days after a hospital-shooting death?
Three things, all of them urgent. First, do not give a recorded statement to any insurance adjuster, HR representative, or ChristianaCare risk-management employee. The friendly check-in call is a recorded-statement trap, and anything you say can be used against you later. Second, do not sign a release in connection with any “sympathy” or “memorial” payment without counsel review. The release will likely waive claims worth far more than the payment. Third, do not discuss the case on social media. The defense will subpoena every post, every photo, and every comment, and they will look for any statement that can be used to limit recovery in Delaware’s modified-comparative-fault system. Set your accounts to private. Do not accept friend requests from people you do not know. Do not allow family members to post on the deceased’s behalf.
7. How quickly do we need to act to preserve evidence?
Immediately. ChristianaCare’s CCTV from the ED, the lobby, and the parking areas typically overwrites on a 7-30 day cycle. The shooter’s complete employment file is often “lawyered up” within days of a major incident. LPR data retention varies by operator and can be as short as 30 days. Body-cam footage is requestable under FOIA but subject to active-investigation restrictions. Cell-phone records are subject to 30-90 day retention windows at many providers. The litigation-hold letter goes out the day the family retains us. If a category of evidence is at risk of destruction, we file an emergency motion to preserve it.
8. Will ChristianaCare try to blame the victim?
Almost certainly. Delaware is a modified comparative fault jurisdiction with a 51% bar under 10 Del. C. § 8132. The defense will argue that the deceased employee was somehow at fault — that they should have secured the door, that they should have followed a security protocol, that they should have “seen it coming.” The counter to each of those arguments is that the legal duty to keep the ED safe belonged to ChristianaCare, not to the employee showing up for a shift. The shooter is the cause. The hospital’s failure to provide reasonable security is the second cause. The victim is not the cause. Intentional violent acts defeat comparative-fault defenses, and we will move to strike any argument that tries to blame the deceased employee for being shot at work.
9. What if the shooter had a history of threats that the hospital knew about?
That is the negligent-retention case in a single sentence. If ChristianaCare knew — or should have known — that the shooter posed a danger to coworkers, and the hospital placed or kept him in proximity to coworkers anyway, the hospital’s conduct becomes the second cause of the death, alongside the shooter himself. Discovery focuses on the personnel file: prior complaints, prior discipline, prior threats (verbal, written, electronic), prior restraining orders or Protection From Abuse orders, EAP records, mental-health accommodations, and any supervisor or HR awareness of behavioral red flags. The negligent-retention case is also the strongest path to piercing the workers’ compensation exclusivity bar under 19 Del. C. § 2304.
10. What if our family member was a ChristianaCare patient or visitor, not an employee?
The legal analysis is simpler. A patient or visitor is an invitee on ChristianaCare’s premises, and the duty the hospital owes to an invitee is the same duty the hospital owes to its own employees in the negligent-security context: the duty to exercise reasonable care to protect against foreseeable third-party criminal acts. Workers’ compensation is not in the picture for a non-employee, and the only question is whether the harm was foreseeable and whether the hospital’s security measures were reasonable in light of that foreseeability. The damages analysis, the evidence-preservation requirements, the insurance playbook, and the trial strategy are otherwise the same.
The Call You Make Today Shapes the Case You Can Prove Tomorrow
If you are the family of the deceased ChristianaCare employee who was shot on June 16, 2026, the next 30 days will determine the strength of the case more than the next 30 months. The evidence is dying on a clock. The personnel file is being sealed. The witnesses are being approached by defense investigators. The insurance adjuster is calling. The HR meeting is being scheduled. The sympathy payment is being drafted. Every one of these moves is part of a defense playbook that has been running for a long time, and the only way to level the playing field is to retain a trial team on your side that knows the playbook, knows the law, and knows how to build a case that holds up in a New Castle County courtroom.
We are that firm. We have spent more than 27 years in courtrooms — Ralph Manginello, our managing partner, in federal and state court; Lupe Peña, our associate attorney, inside the insurance-defense rooms where the playbook was invented and now using it in reverse. We have recovered more than $50 million for families since 1998. We have handled BP Texas City refinery-explosion litigation, brain-injury and amputation cases with seven-figure results, and the full range of wrongful-death and premises-liability claims. We handle every case on a contingency fee, with no retainer, no hourly billing, and no cost to the family unless we win. The consultation is free, confidential, and available 24/7. Spanish-language service is available through Lupe and our bilingual intake team — Hablamos Español.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. The first conversation is the most important one. The preservation letter goes out the day you call. The fight begins the day you call. And the family deserves a firm that is on the phone when the family calls.
This page is legal information, not legal advice for any specific case. The information above describes Delaware law as of the date of publication and may change. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The use of this website and the submission of any information do not create an attorney-client relationship. To discuss your specific situation, contact Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC — at 1-888-ATTY-911 for a free, confidential consultation.