The Call You Got This Week
You got a call this week that no one is built to take. Someone you love was inside Wilmington Hospital — a ChristianaCare hospital on the 500 block of West 14th Street — when a 23-year-old man walked in and started shooting. One person is dead. Another is injured. The shooter is in custody in Philadelphia, awaiting extradition. The mayor has been on television. The hospital has issued a statement about “cooperating with law enforcement” and about how its “hearts are with the victims.” And you are sitting somewhere tonight — at a kitchen table, in a hospital waiting room, in a parking lot outside an ICU — wondering what comes next, and what anyone is going to do about it.
This page is for you. It is for the family of the person who died. It is for the survivor who is still in a hospital bed somewhere. It is for the patient guide who heard the shots and ran, and for the mother whose daughter was locked in a room while a SWAT team went floor to floor. It is for every staff member who went to work at a hospital and ended up barricaded inside one.
We are going to walk through what Delaware law actually allows you to do, who can be held responsible, what evidence is about to disappear, what the hospital and its insurance company are going to do in the next 72 hours, and what compensation the law actually makes available. We will not soften the parts of this that are hard to hear — including the one piece of Delaware law that is more hostile to families than almost any other state’s, and that will shape every decision from this point forward.
The consultation is free, confidential, and there is no fee unless we recover for you. You can call 1-888-ATTY-911. Hablamos Español. We will take the call.
What We Know About the June 16, 2026 Shooting at Wilmington Hospital
At approximately 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday, June 16, 2026, shots were fired inside Wilmington Hospital, the ChristianaCare-operated facility on the 500 block of West 14th Street in Wilmington, Delaware. Wilmington Police Chief Wilfredo Campos confirmed that two people were struck. One died. The other was injured; their condition has not been publicly released.
Chief Campos described the incident as a “targeted and isolated incident.” He declined at his initial news conference to confirm or deny whether the 23-year-old male suspect — taken into custody hours later in Philadelphia and awaiting extradition back to Delaware — had a current or former employment relationship with the hospital. That is a question the Chief did not rule out.
“Our hearts are with the victims, their families and loved ones, and everyone affected by today’s violence. This is a tragic and deeply painful moment for our community.” — Jennifer Schwartz, Esq., incoming president and CEO, ChristianaCare
The hospital was placed on lockdown for several hours. Staff and patients were barricaded inside rooms. Brian Pfeffer, a patient guide, told reporters he heard what sounded like two firecrackers, then ran. Lydia Jones’s daughter, a hospital employee, was locked in a room while SWAT teams went room by floor to clear the building. The emergency department diverted patients during the incident. The lockdown was eventually lifted and the campus reopened.
Multiple agencies are now jointly investigating: Wilmington Police Department (the lead agency), New Castle County Police, Delaware State Police, and the FBI’s Baltimore field office. Wilmington Mayor John Carney called the shooting “senseless.” Delaware Governor Matt Meyer disclosed that the shooting “hits close to home” because his wife works within the ChristianaCare health system. U.S. Senators Chris Coons and Lisa Blunt Rochester, and U.S. Representative Sarah McBride, issued statements of prayer and concern.
That is the public record. The legal record is what we build next.
Why ChristianaCare Is a Named Defendant — Not Just the Shooter
The shooter will be prosecuted criminally. That prosecution will not pay your medical bills, your funeral expenses, your lost income, or the cost of the years you have lost. A criminal conviction produces a sentence. A civil case produces compensation. The two are not in conflict — they are not even on the same track. To recover for what has happened, your family has a civil claim, and the deepest pocket in this case is not a 23-year-old suspect. It is the institution that controlled the building.
ChristianaCare owed a duty of reasonable care to every patient, visitor, and staff member inside Wilmington Hospital on June 16, 2026. That duty is not abstract. It is set out, in measurable form, by accreditors and regulators the hospital was required to follow.
The Joint Commission — the body that accredits nearly every American hospital — has published Environment of Care standards (EC.02.01.01 and EC.04.01.01) that require hospitals to identify security risks and implement mitigation plans. Effective January 2022, the Joint Commission also adopted a dedicated Workplace Violence Prevention standard requiring hospitals to conduct violent-incident risk assessments, document training, and maintain a written workplace-violence prevention program. The CMS Conditions of Participation at 42 CFR 482.13(c)(2) require hospitals to “ensure a safe environment” for patients. Delaware has its own hospital-safety regulations under Title 16 of the Delaware Administrative Code, Section 3300 and following. And federal workplace-safety law applies to every hospital in the country:
“Each employer shall furnish to each of his employees employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his employees.” — 29 U.S.C. § 654(a)(1), the Occupational Safety and Health Act’s General Duty Clause
These are not suggestions. They are the standard of care. We will retain a hospital-security expert — typically a former IAHSS (International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety) leader or a former Joint Commission surveyor — to compare what ChristianaCare’s security posture actually was on June 16, 2026, against the published industry standard. If the gap between what the standard required and what the hospital did is significant — and based on the public facts available today, that is the question we will be investigating — the breach of duty is established.
The foreseeability piece is the second half of the equation. Wilmington Hospital sits on the 500 block of West 14th Street, in a neighborhood — the West Side / Cool Spring area, adjacent to Brandywine Village and Trinity Vicinity — that Delaware law enforcement has repeatedly designated as a high-incident area for shootings and violent crime. The hospital’s own incident reports, risk assessments, OSHA 300 logs, and Joint Commission survey reports over the last several years will tell us what ChristianaCare actually knew about the risk of armed intrusion onto its campus. If the hospital had that knowledge and did not act, the breach is not a question — it is a fact the jury will weigh.
The hospital will argue that the shooting was “targeted and isolated,” as Chief Campos described. We will respond that a targeted shooting in a place where the public is invited to be vulnerable — a hospital — is exactly the scenario that the security regulations were written for. A foreseeable risk that came true is not a defense. It is the breach.
Theories of Liability: How a Hospital Becomes Liable for a Shooter
There is more than one path to a verdict or settlement in a case like this. We build all of them in parallel, because we do not know which one will produce the strongest evidence until the evidence is in.
Negligent security / inadequate security measures. This is the core premises-liability theory. The plaintiff must prove (1) the hospital owed a duty of care to invitees, (2) the breach of that duty created an unreasonable risk of harm, (3) the breach was the proximate cause of injury, and (4) damages. The “unreasonable risk” question is answered by industry standards — IAHSS guidelines, Joint Commission requirements, CMS Conditions of Participation, OSHA guidance — and by the hospital’s own internal documents. If the hospital lacked metal detection at the public entrance, had no armed security presence in the ED, had inadequate camera coverage, had not conducted active-shooter drills in the preceding twelve months, or had propped doors and unmonitored service entrances, those are the breach.
Negligent hiring, retention, training, and supervision. If the 23-year-old shooter is or was a ChristianaCare employee — and the Police Chief would not rule it out — a separate theory of liability attaches directly to the hospital. Negligent hiring means the hospital failed to screen the shooter for known risk factors during the application process: a criminal history, a violent background, references that would have flagged the danger, or a failure to run the background check required under 11 Del. C. § 1448. Negligent retention means the hospital kept him on after red flags appeared — coworker complaints, an Employee Assistance Program referral, an incident report, a fitness-for-duty concern. Negligent training means ChristianaCare did not train its staff to recognize and report behavioral warning signs. Negligent supervision means the hospital did not act on the warnings it received. Each of these is an independent basis for institutional liability.
Negligent entrustment / access-control failure. A hospital employee badge that was not deactivated on termination, a service door propped open for a smoking break, a tailgating event at a controlled entrance, a malfunctioning card reader that everyone knew about and no one reported — these are access-control failures, and they are direct breaches of the duty of care. The badge-system audit log is the central evidence. We will demand it. If the shooter used a current employee badge to walk into the building, the hospital’s negligence is not arguable. It is documented in the access-control system.
Negligent infliction of emotional distress (NIED). Delaware recognizes NIED claims for persons in the zone of danger of a traumatic event and for direct victims of violent crime who suffer serious emotional injury. Staff members who were locked in rooms with patients while shots were fired, patients who witnessed the event, family members who arrived to find the hospital in lockdown — these are potential NIED claimants, particularly those who require ongoing mental-health treatment. PTSD after an event like this is not theoretical. The diagnosis and treatment pathway is the same as in any other catastrophic-injury case — we have written about PTSD claims after serious accidents in other contexts, and the analysis translates directly. A NIED claim is its own case, with its own damages, and it can be filed alongside the wrongful-death case for the deceased.
Wrongful death (10 Del. C. § 3724) and survival action (10 Del. C. § 3725). These are the two distinct civil actions Delaware law creates when a death is caused by the negligence of another. The wrongful-death claim belongs to the surviving beneficiaries — the spouse, the children, the parents if there is no spouse or child. It compensates them for the value of what they have lost: financial support, services, companionship, guidance, consortium. The survival action belongs to the estate of the deceased and compensates the decedent for the pre-death pain, suffering, medical expenses, and lost earnings. Both have a two-year statute of limitations. Punitive damages are NOT available in a Delaware wrongful-death action. They ARE available in a survival action if the conduct rises to malice, gross negligence, or wanton disregard — and the prior OSHA citation history, the ignored risk assessments, and the security failures the hospital knew about and did not fix, are exactly the kind of evidence that can establish that higher standard.
We will build all of these theories. We do not commit to a single path until we have the evidence, because we have seen cases where the theory the family started with was not the theory that produced the recovery.
Delaware Law: The Rules That Will Govern Your Case
Delaware is a small state, but its tort law has features that are not familiar to most families and that change how a case like this has to be fought. We will walk you through each one, plainly.
Delaware still uses pure contributory negligence. This is the most important piece of law on this page, and you need to understand it before you make any decision. Delaware is one of only four or five states in the country that has never adopted comparative negligence. Under pure contributory negligence, if the person who was killed is found to be even 1% at fault for what happened, the family’s recovery is barred entirely. Not reduced. Barred. Zero.
This is a hostile rule. It exists in only a handful of states — Delaware, Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia — and it is the reason the defense will spend enormous energy trying to find any scrap of evidence that the victim contributed to what happened. Did the decedent know the shooter? Was there a personal conflict? Did the decedent visit the hospital in a way that could be characterized as inappropriate? Did the decedent say something, post something, do anything that could be twisted into a percentage of fault? Every allegation of victim fault is a motion to dismiss your case. This is not speculation. It is how defense counsel in contributory-negligence jurisdictions handle every case of this kind.
We do not let the defense use this rule against your family. The work of proving the decedent was a victim, not a contributor, is the work we do from day one. The evidence we preserve, the depositions we take, and the experts we retain are all directed, in part, at closing the contributory-negligence door before the defense can walk through it.
The wrongful-death statute, 10 Del. C. § 3724. This is the Delaware Wrongful Death Act. It creates a civil action in favor of the surviving beneficiaries when a death is “caused by the wrongful act, neglect, or default” of another, in circumstances where the deceased could have recovered damages had they lived. The action is brought by the personal representative of the estate, on behalf of the statutory beneficiaries. The statute sets a strict priority for who qualifies: first, the surviving spouse; second, the children; third, the parents if there is no spouse or child. Siblings and grandparents qualify only if there are no primary beneficiaries. The action carries a two-year statute of limitations from the date of death.
The survival statute, 10 Del. C. § 3725. This is separate from the wrongful-death claim. It belongs to the estate of the deceased and compensates the decedent, personally, for what they endured between the moment of injury and the moment of death — the pain, the medical expenses, the lost earnings during that period. It also carries a two-year statute of limitations. The key difference for your family: in a survival action, punitive damages are available if the defendant’s conduct rose to malice, gross negligence, or wanton disregard. That is a very high bar, but it is the bar that a hospital with a documented history of ignored security warnings and prior violent incidents on its campus is built to meet.
10 Del. C. § 6302 — proportionate fault for non-economic damages. Delaware applies joint and several liability as a default, but Section 6302 modifies that rule for non-economic damages (pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of companionship) when there are multiple defendants. Each defendant is responsible only for its proportionate share of the non-economic damages. This is important because the shooter, the security contractor, and the hospital may all be defendants, and we will need to structure the case so that the hospital’s share is enforceable.
No punitive damages in a Delaware wrongful-death action. We have said it once, we will say it again. This is the most significant case-value limitation in your case. The same conduct in a survival action, however, can support punitive damages. The strategic consequence is that we will work the survival action aggressively and develop the evidence of egregious conduct — ignored warnings, prior incidents, OSHA citations, the regulatory framework the hospital was supposed to follow and did not — for the survival case.
Venue: New Castle County Superior Court, Wilmington. This is where your case will be filed, in the state’s busiest trial court, in the county where the shooting occurred and where the jury will be drawn from. The U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware is also an option if we name any federal defendant.
If you want to read more about how we handle wrongful-death claims across our practice, that page explains the work. The Delaware-specific points above are the ones that distinguish this case from a wrongful-death case in any other state.
The 72-Hour Evidence Clock
Every premises-liability case has a clock. The 72 hours after an incident are when the most important evidence is at the highest risk of being lost — not by anyone doing anything wrong, but by the routine operation of the systems that hold the evidence. In a hospital case, those systems are hospital systems. They overwrite on a schedule. They are not waiting for a preservation letter. The clock starts now.
Hospital CCTV and video surveillance. Most hospital video management systems record on a rolling loop of 7 to 30 days. The cameras covering the 500 block entrance, the lobby, the emergency department, the ground floor, the elevators, the stairwells, and the parking areas are the central evidence in this case. They will show how the shooter entered the building, how long he was inside before shots were fired, what his behavior was during that time, and how the hospital’s security staff responded. This footage is the single most important piece of evidence your family will ever see, and it is on a countdown. The preservation letter goes out the day you call us.
Employee badge and access-control system logs. ChristianaCare’s access-control system creates an audit log every time a badge is presented to a reader, every time a door is forced, every time a controlled area is accessed. The log will show, with timestamp precision, whether the shooter used a current employee badge, a deactivated badge, a copied badge, a tailgating event, or a propped door. The system retains this data on a variable schedule — sometimes 48 hours, sometimes weeks, sometimes longer — and the hospital’s IT department is the only entity that can preserve it. We send the preservation letter to the IT director and the security director at the same time.
HR file on the shooter (if current or former employee). If the shooter is or was a ChristianaCare employee — and the Police Chief has not ruled that out — the HR file is the most important document in the case. It contains the application, the background check, the references, the performance reviews, the disciplinary actions, the Employee Assistance Program referrals, the weapons-policy acknowledgments, the prior complaints, and the termination documentation (if applicable). Routine destruction schedules can purge the most useful documents first. We obtain the file through a Delaware Superior Court subpoena or a records-preservation letter to in-house counsel with a sworn certification of completeness.
Hospital incident reports, risk assessments, OSHA 300 logs, Joint Commission survey reports, prior workplace-violence reports (last 5 years). This is the foreseeability evidence. These are the documents that show the hospital knew, or should have known, that armed intrusion onto its campus was a foreseeable risk. The OSHA 300 log is a specific, federally required log of workplace injuries and illnesses that includes workplace-violence incidents. The Joint Commission survey reports identify deficiencies the hospital was required to correct. The risk assessments are internal documents the hospital’s security team prepared and updated — or failed to prepare and update. These are the documents ChristianaCare is most likely to claim are privileged. We do not accept that claim. 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 criminal investigation is producing 911 audio, dispatch logs, body camera footage, scene photographs, ballistic reports, and witness statements. Delaware’s Freedom of Information Act (29 Del. C. § 10001) gives us a statutory right to these records, with a response window the agency must meet. The preservation request goes out the same day the family calls.
Visitor management system logs, patient admission records, ED triage records. This is the witness-identification evidence. The visitor management system shows who was in the building that day. The patient records show who was being treated in the ED. The triage records establish the timeline. Visitor data is typically purged within 30 to 90 days. We preserve it now.
Hospital radio traffic, PA announcements, lockdown drill history, active-shooter training records. The hospital’s own response is evidence. The drill history will tell us when ChristianaCare last ran an active-shooter drill at this campus. The training records will tell us whether staff were trained on Run-Hide-Fight. The radio traffic will tell us how long it took from the first 911 call to the first lockdown announcement. Industry standard is measured in minutes. Anything beyond that is breach.
ChristianaCare’s general liability, excess, and umbrella insurance policies. We send a separate policy-disclosure demand to the broker and the carrier. Hospital systems typically carry $10 million to $50 million or more in general liability and umbrella coverage, often with separate violence-coverage endorsements. The insurance policy is the recovery target. We want to know its terms before we send any demand.
Cell phone records of the shooter and the decedent. Cell phone records will establish the relationship between the shooter and the victim, the timeline, and the location. These require a court order. We move quickly to preserve them.
ATF trace and serial-number history of the firearm. If the firearm is recovered, the ATF will trace it. The trace will identify the original purchaser and the chain of custody. If the shooter was a prohibited possessor, or if the firearm was acquired through a straw purchase, the negligent-hiring theory gains additional force.
We do not wait. The preservation letter is sent the day you call. We know which systems overwrite, which documents get purged, and which records the hospital will try to claim are privileged. We move before the clock runs.
What ChristianaCare and Its Insurer Will Do Next
This is the part of the case the family does not see, because the insurance carrier and the defense lawyers are working quietly while the family is grieving. We are naming the plays here because the only defense against a playbook is to know it exists.
The sympathy-and-cooperation play. The hospital has already started. The CEO’s statement, the cooperation with law enforcement, the public expression of concern for the victims — all of this is the first play. It is sincere in the sense that the hospital did not want this to happen. It is strategic in the sense that the goal is to position ChristianaCare as a victim too, to soften the public narrative, and to make any subsequent legal claim look like an attack on an institution that was itself attacked. Do not be moved by the sympathy. Judge the hospital by what it actually did to prevent this, and by what it does now to preserve the evidence.
The “appropriate security” defense. The hospital will tell the jury that it had appropriate security for a hospital in an urban area — that it complied with Joint Commission standards, that it followed industry practice, that the shooter was the sole cause. We will respond with the hospital’s own risk assessments, the gap between IAHSS standards and what the hospital actually deployed, the OSHA citation history if one exists, the prior violent incidents on or near the campus, and the testimony of our security expert. “Appropriate” is a comparative word. We will show what “appropriate” actually means.
The contributory-negligence attack. We have already explained this. The defense will look for any evidence that the victim contributed to the shooting — a prior relationship with the shooter, a workplace dispute, a domestic-violence angle, anything that can be characterized as fault. The defense does not need much. One percent is enough to bar your family’s recovery. Our job is to make sure that door is closed before the defense can open it. We do that through the evidence we preserve, the depositions we take, and the narrative we build from day one.
The recorded-statement call. Within days of the incident, a sympathetic-sounding adjuster or investigator from the hospital’s insurance carrier will call. The adjuster will say they are calling to “check on you” and to “make sure you are getting the help you need.” What the adjuster wants is a recorded statement — a statement that can be played back at deposition or at trial to lock in a version of events that the defense can use. The first call after a tragedy is the most important call. We have a complete guide on what not to say to an insurance adjuster that explains this in detail. The short version: decline the call, refer the adjuster to us, and do not give a statement of any kind until you have counsel.
The quick-settlement pressure. Within weeks, the defense may approach with a settlement offer. The offer will be framed as a way to “avoid the stress of a trial” and to “get closure.” The number will be small relative to the value of the case. The goal is to lock in a low number before the evidence is developed, before the experts are retained, and before the jury sees the security failures. We do not settle until we know what the case is worth, and we do not know that until we have the evidence. A fast settlement is a discounted settlement.
The shooter-blame shift. The defense will argue, sometimes explicitly and sometimes by implication, that the entire responsibility lies with the 23-year-old shooter. He is responsible. He will be prosecuted. He may spend years in prison. That does not change the hospital’s civil liability. The hospital controlled the building. The hospital owed a duty to the people inside. The hospital’s failures are not erased by the shooter’s conduct. The law has recognized this for more than a century, in every state, in every case where a third-party criminal act was foreseeable. We do not let the defense shift the entire case to the shooter.
What Compensation Looks Like in a Delaware Hospital Shooting Case
We will not promise you a number. The number depends on the facts we develop, the evidence we preserve, the experts we retain, and the strength of the case we build. What we can do is explain the categories of damages Delaware law makes available, the realistic range based on cases of this type, and the factors that move the number up or down.
Economic damages. These are the verifiable dollar losses. Medical and emergency-department expenses incurred by the deceased before death. Funeral and burial expenses. The projected lifetime lost wages and benefits the deceased would have earned, calculated using Delaware-specific Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data and adjusted for work-life expectancy. The reasonable value of household services the deceased would have provided — childcare, eldercare, home maintenance, the work of running a household. For the injured survivor, separately: past and future medical expenses, lost earning capacity, and the cost of any ongoing care.
Non-economic damages. These are the losses that do not come with a receipt. Loss of companionship, guidance, and consortium to the surviving spouse. Loss of parental guidance to surviving children. Mental anguish. The grief that has no market price. In a case where a person is killed inside a hospital — a place where they went for healing, in a moment when they were at their most vulnerable — the non-economic damages are substantial. Delaware juries in New Castle County understand what it means to lose a family member in this way.
Survival-action damages. As we discussed, the survival action compensates the deceased for the pre-death pain, suffering, medical expenses, and lost earnings. This is a separate pool of damages, and it is the action in which punitive damages are available if the evidence supports them. The pre-death pain-and-suffering component of a survival action in a hospital shooting can be significant, because the victim was conscious in a place where help was ten feet away and security was supposed to be in place.
The realistic range. Based on our assessment of cases of this type — a targeted shooting in a place of public accommodation, with one death and one injury, with a defendant that is a sophisticated institutional healthcare system with significant insurance coverage, in a venue (New Castle County) where jury verdicts in personal-injury cases have been substantial — the combined wrongful-death and survival claims realistically fall in the range of $1.5 million to $7.5 million before considering punitive exposure on the survival action. Cases with young decedents, dependent minor children, or documented prior warning signs that the hospital ignored can push values above $10 million. Cases with elderly decedents and no dependents trend toward the lower end. The injured survivor’s claim is a separate, additive value pool of $250,000 to $3 million or more depending on the permanence of the injury.
What moves the number up: decedent age and earning capacity; number and age of statutory beneficiaries; strength of the foreseeability evidence; clarity of the access-control failure; OSHA citation history; whether the shooter was a current or former employee; jury composition in New Castle County.
What moves the number down: comparative weakness of the foreseeability evidence; decedent’s age and minimal earning history; no dependents; the hospital’s ability to mount a sympathetic defense; the contributory-negligence door the defense will try to open.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. Every case is its own case. The number we develop for your family will be based on your family’s facts, not on a range we quote from another case.
What to Do (and NOT Do) in the First 72 Hours
If you are reading this in the first 72 hours after the shooting, this section is for you. The decisions you make in the next three days will affect the case for the next three years.
Do not give a recorded statement to anyone. Not to the hospital’s insurance adjuster. Not to a “claims investigator” who sounds sympathetic. Not to a private investigator working for the hospital or its counsel. Not even to your own insurance company until you have spoken to us. Every recorded statement in a case like this becomes a tool the defense uses later. Decline politely. Refer them to us.
Do not sign anything. No releases. No authorizations. No medical-record releases. No settlement agreements. No “sympathy” payments that come with a release printed on the back. If someone from the hospital or its carrier offers money, take the offer to us before you sign anything.
Do not post about the case on social media. Nothing on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, LinkedIn, or any other platform. The defense will subpoena your social media and use anything you have posted — a memory of the victim, a comment about the hospital, a photograph from a happier time — to argue contributory fault, to minimize damages, or to impeach your testimony. Go quiet publicly. Talk to us privately.
Do preserve what you can. Photographs of the victim from happier times. Records of employment and income. Medical records from the hospital. The names of any witnesses you know. The badge or employee ID if the victim was a ChristianaCare employee. Text messages or emails related to the hospital visit. Save them outside the cloud to a location you control.
Do get medical attention. If you are the injured survivor, follow the medical advice of your treating physicians completely. If you are a family member who was locked in the hospital during the shooting and you are experiencing nightmares, intrusive thoughts, anxiety, or any of the symptoms of acute stress or PTSD — seek treatment now. The NIED claim requires documented treatment, and you deserve the care regardless of the case.
Do contact the Delaware Victims’ Compensation Assistance Program. Under 11 Del. C. § 9001, the State of Delaware provides compensation to victims of violent crime for medical expenses, counseling, lost wages, and funeral costs. The program is separate from any civil recovery. We can help you apply.
If you have minor children who were affected by the shooting, our parents’ guide to child injury lawsuits explains some of the long-term considerations. Children who witness violence carry that for the rest of their lives. Their claims — and their treatment — matter.
Do call us. 1-888-ATTY-911. Free consultation. Confidential. No fee unless we recover for you. We will take the call.
How We Build a Case Like This
This is the work. We are going to walk you through it the way we walk every client through it — step by step, in the order it happens, with the honesty about how long it takes and what it costs in time and emotional energy.
Week one. Preservation. The preservation letter goes out the day you retain us. We send it to ChristianaCare’s general counsel, the IT director, the security director, the HR director, and the records custodian. We send simultaneous preservation requests to the Wilmington Police Department, the New Castle County Police Department, the Delaware State Police, and the FBI Baltimore field office under Delaware’s Freedom of Information Act (29 Del. C. § 10001). We send a policy-disclosure demand to the hospital’s insurance broker. We retain a hospital-security expert and a forensic criminologist on day one, because the experts need to be involved in the evidence-preservation process from the beginning, not after the evidence is gone.
The first 30 days. We file the complaint in New Castle County Superior Court. The complaint names ChristianaCare as the institutional defendant, and may also name the private security contractor if one is identified, and the shooter in his individual capacity. We serve a Rule 34 production demand on ChristianaCare covering security policies, prior incident reports, training records, badge-system audit logs, the HR file on the shooter (if employee), risk assessments, OSHA 300 logs, and Joint Commission survey reports. We notice the Rule 30(b)(6) deposition of ChristianaCare — the corporate representative deposition that locks the hospital into its security posture under oath.
Months two through six. Depositions. We depose the on-scene security director, the ED charge nurse, the shooter’s direct supervisor (if employee), the hospital’s outside security contractor’s account manager, and the Wilmington Police Department’s lead investigator. Each deposition is taken under oath, transcribed by a court reporter, and used both to develop the evidence for trial and to test the defense’s theory of the case. We exchange expert reports with the defense — our hospital-security expert, our criminologist, our life-care planner (if the survivor has permanent injury), our economist (for lost-earnings calculation).
Months six through twelve. Mediation. After the expert exchange, the court will typically schedule mediation. Mediation is a structured settlement negotiation before a neutral mediator. The defense usually does not make a serious settlement offer until the 30(b)(6) deposition is complete and the expert exchange has shown the defense what our case actually looks like. Most cases of this type resolve at mediation. We prepare for mediation the way we prepare for trial — because the case that is ready for trial is the case that settles for the right number.
Trial. If the case does not resolve, we try it. New Castle County juries take institutional accountability seriously. The voir dire — jury selection — will explore attitudes on hospital safety, gun rights, Wilmington crime perceptions, and contributory negligence. We have tried cases of this complexity. We will try this one.
Throughout. You are kept informed. We answer the phone. We return your call the same day. The firm was built on the idea that people in a legal emergency deserve someone who picks up.
Why Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC
We are a trial firm. We were founded on the idea that people in a legal emergency deserve a lawyer who answers the phone. Our managing partner, Ralph Manginello, has spent more than 27 years in courtrooms — state and federal, including admission to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. Before he was a lawyer, Ralph was a journalist — a trained storyteller. He understands how a hospital system and its insurance carrier will fight a case like this, because he has fought them before. He has pursued cases against some of the largest corporate defendants in the country, and he has stood in front of juries and won — and he has lost, because not every case is won. He will tell you the truth about your case, including the parts that are hard to hear.
Our associate attorney, Lupe Peña, is a former insurance-defense attorney. He spent years inside a national defense firm, in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like yours. He knows how the playbook runs. He knows how reserves are set. He knows how a recorded statement is engineered, how a quick settlement is structured, and how the defense will try to pin a percentage of fault on your family. He now runs that playbook in reverse, for the people the playbook was built to defeat. Lupe is fully fluent in Spanish, and we serve families in both English and Spanish.
Our firm has recovered more than $50 million for Texas families over the course of our practice. We have represented plaintiffs in catastrophic personal-injury, trucking, refinery, and wrongful-death cases, including our role in the BP Texas City refinery explosion litigation. We have pursued institutional defendants in cases of every kind. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. What we bring to your case is not a guarantee of outcome. It is a commitment of work.
For Delaware cases, we work with local Delaware counsel. We do not have a Delaware office. We have the trial experience, the federal-court experience, and the cross-state capability to pursue catastrophic-injury cases wherever the defendant is, and ChristianaCare’s principal place of business and the scene of the shooting are within our reach. The local counsel handles the Delaware procedural work. We handle the case strategy, the evidence development, the expert retention, and the trial. You have one team, with one plan, fighting one fight. If you want to read about the full range of our practice areas, that page explains what we do.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who can file a wrongful-death lawsuit in Delaware after a hospital shooting?
The action is filed by the personal representative of the deceased’s estate, on behalf of the statutory beneficiaries. Under 10 Del. C. § 3724, Delaware follows a strict priority: first, the surviving spouse; second, the children; third, the parents if there is no spouse or child. Siblings and grandparents qualify only if there are no primary beneficiaries. If there is no will and no one has been appointed as personal representative, the Delaware Superior Court can appoint one. We handle that appointment as part of the case.
How long do I have to file?
Two years from the date of death for the wrongful-death action under 10 Del. C. § 3724, and two years for the survival action under 10 Del. C. § 3725. The clock runs from the date of death, not from the date of the shooting. If your loved one was hospitalized for a period between the shooting and the death, the clock starts on the date of death. Two years sounds like a long time. It is not. The evidence clock — the CCTV, the badge logs, the HR file — is measured in days and weeks, not years. We do the preservation work in week one.
What is the difference between a wrongful-death claim and a survival action?
A wrongful-death claim compensates the surviving family members for their own losses — the financial support, the services, the companionship, the guidance, the consortium they have lost. A survival action compensates the deceased, through the estate, for the pre-death pain, suffering, medical expenses, and lost earnings between the moment of injury and the moment of death. The two claims are filed together, but they are legally distinct, and the damages in each are calculated separately. Punitive damages are not available in the wrongful-death claim in Delaware, but they are available in the survival action if the defendant’s conduct rose to malice, gross negligence, or wanton disregard.
Is Delaware a comparative-negligence or contributory-negligence state?
Delaware is one of only a handful of states that still uses pure contributory negligence. If the deceased is found to be even 1% at fault for what happened, the family’s recovery is barred entirely — not reduced, barred. This is a hostile rule and it is the reason the defense will spend significant effort trying to find any evidence that the victim contributed to the shooting. We do not let the defense use this rule against your family. The work of proving the deceased was a victim, not a contributor, is built into the case from day one.
Can I sue the shooter personally?
Yes, the shooter is a proper defendant. The practical reality is that a 23-year-old with no visible assets is rarely collectable. A judgment against him is still strategically useful — it can trigger insurance coverage under any homeowners or renters policy he had at the time, and it locks the criminal conduct into the civil record. We name him in the case, and we pursue the institutional defendants with the assets and the insurance.
What if the shooter was a ChristianaCare employee?
The Police Chief has not ruled that out. If the shooter is or was a ChristianaCare employee, the hospital faces direct negligent-hiring, negligent-retention, negligent-training, and negligent-supervision liability. The HR file becomes the central piece of evidence. The access-control audit log becomes the central piece of evidence. The background check that was or was not run becomes the central piece of evidence. The company’s prior knowledge of any red flags becomes the central piece of evidence. This is the theory of the case that the Wilmington Police Department investigation will inform, and we will pursue it aggressively.
Can hospital staff or patients who were locked down sue for emotional distress?
Yes, under a negligent-infliction-of-emotional-distress (NIED) theory. Delaware recognizes NIED claims for persons in the zone of danger of a traumatic event and for direct victims of violent crime who suffer serious emotional injury. Staff members who were locked in rooms with patients while shots were fired, patients who witnessed the event, family members who arrived to find the hospital in lockdown — these are potential NIED claimants. The PTSD that follows an event like this is real and is well-documented in the medical literature. The NIED claim is its own case, with its own damages, and it can be filed alongside the wrongful-death case for the deceased.
How much is my case worth?
The honest answer is: it depends on the facts we develop. Based on cases of this type — a targeted shooting in a place of public accommodation, with one death and one injury, against a sophisticated institutional defendant with significant insurance coverage — the combined wrongful-death and survival claims realistically fall in the range of $1.5 million to $7.5 million before considering punitive exposure on the survival action. Cases with young decedents, dependent minor children, or documented prior warning signs that the hospital ignored can push values above $10 million. The injured survivor’s claim is a separate, additive value pool of $250,000 to $3 million or more depending on the permanence of the injury. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
How long will the case take?
For a case of this complexity — a premises-liability wrongful-death matter against a hospital system in Delaware — the realistic timeline from filing to resolution is 12 to 24 months. Preservation and early discovery take the first three to six months. Depositions and expert exchange take the next three to six months. Mediation typically occurs between months nine and twelve. Trial, if necessary, is scheduled 12 to 24 months out. The criminal case against the shooter may proceed on a parallel track and may influence the timing of the civil case.
What does it cost to hire your firm?
You pay nothing upfront. We work on a contingency fee — we are paid a percentage of what we recover for you. If we do not recover, you owe us nothing. The case costs — filing fees, deposition transcripts, expert witness fees, records retrieval — are advanced by the firm and reimbursed out of the recovery at the end. The consultation is free, confidential, and carries no obligation.
Should I talk to the hospital’s insurance company before I talk to a lawyer?
No. Decline the call. Refer the adjuster to us. The first call after a tragedy is the call that locks in the version of events the defense will use against you. We have a complete guide on what not to say to an insurance adjuster that explains this in more detail. The short version: nothing you say helps your case, and much of what you say can be used against you. We handle the communication with the insurance carrier so you can focus on your family.
A Free, Confidential Case Review
If your family has been affected by the June 16, 2026 shooting at Wilmington Hospital, we want to hear from you. The consultation is free, confidential, and there is no fee unless we recover for you. We will take the call, walk you through what we know, and tell you honestly what we can and cannot do for your family.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Hablamos Español. You can also reach us through our contact page if you prefer to write first.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are the trial firm that picks up the phone.
This page is legal information about Delaware law as it applies to a negligent-security / wrongful-death matter arising from a hospital shooting. It is not legal advice for your specific situation. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The use of this page, the firm’s website, or any of the firm’s resources does not create an attorney-client relationship. An attorney-client relationship is created only by a written engagement letter signed by both the client and the firm.