Your Family Member Walked Into a Hospital for Help. The Next Thing You Knew, Someone You Love Was Shot.
If you are reading this page, you are living inside the worst day of your life. You may have spent the last hours at a reunification point, in a waiting room, or staring at your phone waiting for a call that never came in the form you needed. You have heard the words targeted and isolated incident from a police chief, and a hospital CEO has said her hearts are with the victims. You have not heard anyone explain what your family is actually entitled to under Delaware law, what evidence is disappearing while you read this, or what an insurance adjuster is going to ask you in the next 24 to 72 hours.
This page is the information your family needs before you sign anything, talk to any adjuster, or let the hospital’s lawyers shape the story. We wrote it for one person at a time — you, reading at the kitchen table, or you, searching on your phone in a hospital parking lot. We are The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC — the brand is Attorney911. Ralph Manginello has spent 27+ years in courtrooms, including federal court, fighting exactly the kind of institutional defendant that just failed your family. Lupe Peña spent years on the other side of the table — inside a national insurance-defense firm, in the rooms where adjusters and their software priced cases like yours — and now uses that playbook to fight for victims in English and in Spanish. The consultation is free, the call is confidential, and there is no fee unless we win. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
What We Know About the June 16, 2026 Shooting at Wilmington Hospital
On June 16, 2026, at approximately 3:30 in the afternoon, a 23-year-old gunman opened fire inside Wilmington Hospital on the 500 block of West 14th Street in Wilmington, Delaware. One person was killed. Another was injured. The hospital — operated by ChristianaCare, the dominant health system in the state — was placed on lockdown for several hours while Wilmington Police, joined by New Castle County Police, Delaware State Police, and the FBI’s Baltimore field office, brought in SWAT teams to clear each floor room by room. Staff and patients barricaded themselves inside. The emergency department diverted patients away from the campus for the duration of the incident.
Wilmington Police Chief Wilfredo Campos called the shooting a “targeted and isolated incident.” Hours later, a 23-year-old male suspect was apprehended in Philadelphia and was awaiting extradition back to Delaware. Campos declined to confirm whether the shooter had a current or former employment relationship with the hospital — the single most important fact in the case, and the one the police are not yet willing to put on the record.
ChristianaCare, in a public statement released the day of the shooting, said its “hearts are with the victims.” The statement was signed by Jennifer Schwartz, Esq., the incoming president and CEO.
Jennifer Schwartz, Esq., incoming president and CEO of ChristianaCare: “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.”
That statement is the opening move in a narrative the hospital will work for the rest of the case. The rest of the public reaction followed the same arc: Mayor John Carney called the shooting “senseless.” Governor Matt Meyer, whose wife works within the ChristianaCare health system, said “today is a sobering reminder that nobody is immune from the devastation of gun violence.” Senators Chris Coons and Lisa Blunt Rochester and Representative Sarah McBride issued statements of prayer and monitoring.
None of those statements tell you whether the hospital had metal detectors at the 500 block entrance, whether the shooter used a current employee badge, whether ChristianaCare had conducted a violence risk assessment under the Joint Commission’s 2022 workplace-violence standards, or whether the shooter had a history of behavioral flags that should have kept him off the premises. Those are the questions that decide your family’s case, and they are the questions we will be asking in a court of law — in New Castle County Superior Court, or in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, depending on how the defense is structured and which defendants we name.
What we know from the witnesses on the scene is the shape of what happened, not the legal liability. Patient guide Brian Pfeffer, who was in the emergency department when the shots were fired, said he heard two shots that sounded like firecrackers and then ran. “Schools, hospitals, there are a lot of people who came in here to be safe, and now you have this stuff happening. It’s scary, very scary,” he said. Lydia Jones’ daughter, a hospital employee, was locked inside a room during the SWAT sweep and was later reunited with her mother. Mayor Carney said staff and patients were “barricaded in rooms across the hospital as our law enforcement teams went through and cleared each of the floors.”
That is the public record. The legal record is what we build from here, and the clock started the moment the last shot was fired.
Who Can Be Held Liable — and Why ChristianaCare Is a Named Defendant
ChristianaCare is a named defendant — and is likely to be the only defendant with the insurance to make your family whole. But the theory of liability is not one theory. It is several, and we will pursue all of them at once, because the corporate defense will try to knock them down one at a time.
Negligent Security and Inadequate Security Measures
This is the spine of the case. A hospital that invites the public onto its premises — patients, visitors, contractors, vendors — owes a duty of reasonable care to protect them against foreseeable criminal acts. Foreseeability is the legal word, but the practical question is simple: did ChristianaCare know, or should it have known, that armed intrusion onto its campus was a real risk, and did it do what a reasonable hospital would do to prevent it? The West Side / Cool Spring / Brandywine Village area around the 500 block of West 14th Street has been a documented high-incident zone for shootings and violent crime for years. Public crime data, Delaware State Police incident reports, and Wilmington Police calls-for-service logs will show the history. A hospital security expert — we retain one in every case like this — will benchmark the hospital’s actual security posture (armed guard coverage, camera coverage, panic buttons, lockdown drill frequency, metal detection, visitor management, badge-access protocols) against industry standards published by the International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety (IAHSS) and against the Joint Commission’s Environment of Care and Workplace Violence Prevention standards, which have required hospitals to conduct violent-incident risk assessments and mitigation plans since January 2022. The gap between what ChristianaCare did and what the standards required is the breach. The shooting is the proximate result.
Negligent Hiring, Retention, Training, and Supervision
If the 23-year-old shooter is or was a ChristianaCare employee — and Chief Campos would not rule it out — the hospital is directly liable for putting him in a position to do this. Healthcare workplace violence is one of the most studied risks in the industry; OSHA, the Joint Commission, and IAHSS all publish guidance on pre-employment screening, behavioral threat assessment, de-escalation training, weapons prohibitions, and post-termination access revocation. The negligent-hiring claim is built from the personnel file: the background check (or the absence of one), the references (or the lack of them), the performance reviews, any prior complaints or EAP referrals, and the date access credentials were deactivated when employment ended. Delaware’s own background-check statute, 11 Del. C. § 1448, sets the state floor for what an employer is supposed to verify before handing someone a badge to a hospital.
Negligent Entrustment and Premises Access Control
The badge and access-control system is a separate, independent theory. If the shooter got into the building with a current employee badge, with a deactivated badge that was never shut off, by tailgating an authorized entrant, or through an unlocked service entrance, ChristianaCare is directly liable for the access-control failure. The badge-system audit trail — the electronic entry/exit data from whatever system they run (HID, Lenel, or a similar platform) — is the single most important piece of physical evidence in the case, and it is the piece most likely to be auto-purged on a routine schedule. That is why the preservation letter for those logs goes out the day you call, not the month the case settles.
Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress
Delaware recognizes NIED for bystanders in the zone of danger and for direct victims of violent crime who suffer serious emotional trauma. The patient guide who heard the shots, the staff members who were locked in rooms with patients during the SWAT sweep, the patients themselves — any of them who require ongoing mental-health treatment because of this may have a separate claim. The Delaware Supreme Court has set the bar high for NIED, but the facts of an active-shooter lockdown in a hospital are about as squarely in the zone of danger as you can get.
The Private Security Contractor and Other Defendants
If ChristianaCare contracted with an external security firm — the major national contractors in this space are Allied Universal, Securitas, and GardaWorld — that contractor is an independent defendant for negligent security staffing, training, supervision, and post orders. Contractual indemnification typically runs back to ChristianaCare, which means the hospital ultimately pays either way, but naming the contractor separately locks in additional insurance coverage and prevents the two defendants from pointing at each other at trial.
The shooter himself is a defendant we name even though he is the obvious defendant and the one least likely to be collectible. A 23-year-old with no visible assets is not where the money is, but a personal judgment creates pressure against any homeowners or renters insurance policy in his name at the time of the incident and preserves the option of post-judgment collection against any future assets or earnings.
If the forensic reconstruction shows the shooter fired from outside the hospital, accessed an unsecured rooftop, used a parking structure, or came through an adjacent property, the owner of that property may share liability for failing to secure a known access vector. We evaluate this theory after the police and ATF reports come in.
We do not concede any of these theories. The corporate defense will try to narrow the case to a single theory — usually the “targeted” framing — and knock the rest down one at a time. We build all of them in parallel and let the evidence decide which ones carry.
Delaware’s Wrongful Death and Survival Action Statutes Explained
Two Delaware statutes carry your family’s case.
10 Del. C. § 3724 — Wrongful death. This is the statute that allows the family of a person killed by the wrongful act of another to recover damages. Under Delaware law, the action is brought by the personal representative of the deceased person’s estate, on behalf of a defined list of statutory beneficiaries. The order of priority matters: surviving spouse first, then children (or their lineal descendants by right of representation), then parents if there is no spouse or child, and only after that siblings or grandparents. The damages are the full value of the decedent’s life to the beneficiaries — economic and non-economic, including loss of companionship, guidance, consortium, and mental anguish. The statute of limitations is two years from the date of death.
10 Del. C. § 3725 — Survival action. This is the statute that allows the decedent’s own pre-death claim to survive the death and be brought by the personal representative for the benefit of the estate. The survival claim captures the decedent’s pre-death pain and suffering, pre-death medical expenses, and any lost wages or earning capacity in the window between the shooting and death. Critically for Delaware cases, the survival action is where punitive damages are available if the defendant’s conduct rose to malice or wanton disregard — conduct that is reckless, that shows a conscious indifference to the safety of others, that the defendant knew or should have known created an unreasonable risk of serious harm, and went ahead anyway. The Joint Commission’s workplace-violence standards, the OSHA General Duty Clause (29 U.S.C. § 654(a)(1)), and the IAHSS guidelines are the standards against which “wanton disregard” will be measured.
Delaware is unusual in a way your family must understand clearly. Unlike many states, Delaware does not allow punitive damages in wrongful-death actions. That is a meaningful ceiling on the case value compared to a similar fact pattern in Texas, New Mexico, or California. It is one of the reasons the survival action matters so much here — it is the only vehicle in a Delaware death case for punitive damages, and punitive damages are often what move a stubborn insurance carrier to pay fair value.
The pure contributory negligence rule (which we cover in its own section below) is the other Delaware-specific feature that shapes everything. Together, these two features — no punitive damages in wrongful death, and pure contributory negligence — are why the case is harder in Delaware than in almost any other state, and why the firm you hire needs to know Delaware law cold, not just personal-injury law in general.
The 2-Year Delaware Deadline You Cannot Afford to Miss
Delaware gives your family two years from the date of death to file a wrongful-death action, and two years from the date of death to file a survival action. The clock started on June 16, 2026 — the day the shooting happened — or on whatever later date your loved one’s death was officially pronounced. If you are reading this within days or weeks of the incident, you have time. You do not have time to waste it.
The legal deadline and the evidence deadline are not the same thing, and the gap between them is where cases are won and lost. The two-year statute of limitations gives you room to investigate, to retain experts, to pursue settlement in good faith, and to file a complete complaint when the picture is clear. The evidence deadline is measured in days, not years. Hospital CCTV overwrites on a 7-to-30-day rolling loop at most institutions. Badge-system audit logs auto-purge on routine schedules. Visitor management data is often gone within 30 to 90 days. The personnel file on the shooter, if he is a current or former employee, is subject to routine records-destruction schedules that we have to interrupt with a litigation-hold letter. Joint Commission survey reports, internal risk assessments, OSHA 300 logs, and prior workplace-violence reports are exactly the documents ChristianaCare is most likely to claim are protected by some form of privilege, and the only way to lock them down is to send the preservation demand now and follow up with subpoenas and motions to compel as needed.
Two years sounds comfortable. It is not. The hospital’s insurance company and its defense counsel are not waiting two years to build their case. They are interviewing witnesses, collecting their own CCTV, building their own timeline, and deciding which of the liable parties they can point the finger at instead. The preservation letter that freezes their records, the FOIA requests that pull the police files, the expert we retain to benchmark the security posture — all of that work starts on the day you call. If you wait six months to see if the insurance company “does the right thing,” you may find that the badge logs are gone, the CCTV has been overwritten, the risk assessments have been “updated” (a polite word for revised), and the witnesses’ memories have faded to the point where they cannot remember what they saw.
This is the part of the case we run in week one, not year one. We can tell you on the first phone call exactly what needs to be preserved, who holds it, and how fast it dies.
Delaware’s Pure Contributory Negligence Rule — The Trap That Can Erase Your Case
Now we need to tell you something about Delaware law that most out-of-state firms do not understand, and that the hospital’s defense counsel will absolutely try to use against your family.
Delaware is one of only a handful of states in the country that still applies the old rule of pure contributory negligence. The rest of the country has moved to comparative fault, where a plaintiff’s recovery is reduced by their percentage of fault but not eliminated. In Delaware, if the decedent is found to be even 1% at fault for the shooting, the family’s recovery is barred in its entirety. The case is over. There is no recovery. That is the rule.
The defense will use it. The first thing ChristianaCare’s lawyers will argue is that because the police chief called the shooting a “targeted and isolated incident,” the decedent was somehow involved in something that brought the violence onto the hospital campus — a personal dispute, a relationship with the shooter, a prior conflict — and that the decedent’s own conduct contributed to the harm. Under Delaware’s contributory negligence rule, even a small finding of victim fault kills the case.
This is not a fair application of the rule, and we fight it. A negligent-security claim against a hospital is not a claim that the hospital caused the shooting. It is a claim that the hospital failed to take reasonable steps to prevent a foreseeable violent intrusion onto its premises, and that the failure was a substantial factor in the resulting harm. The fact that the shooter may have targeted a specific person does not mean the hospital had no duty to screen entrants, to control access, to monitor the surrounding high-crime area, or to maintain a security posture appropriate to the documented risk. The fact that the victim was the intended target does not mean the victim was at fault for the hospital’s failure to keep the shooter out.
The defense’s contributory-negligence theory also has a burden-of-proof problem. In Delaware, the defendant has to prove the plaintiff’s fault by a preponderance of the evidence. The defense has to come forward with actual evidence that the decedent did something wrong that contributed to the harm — not speculation, not “targeted incident” rhetoric, but evidence. If the only evidence is the police chief’s framing, that is not enough. If there is no evidence of victim fault — and in many active-shooter hospital cases there is none — the contributory-negligence defense fails as a matter of law and the case proceeds.
What this means for your family is that the first month of the case is not just about preserving evidence. It is also about building a record that forecloses the contributory-negligence play before the defense can establish it. Witness statements taken while memories are fresh. The hospital’s own incident report. The police interview transcripts. The badge logs that show exactly who the shooter was and how he got in. We build that record on day one.
If you have read other states’ pages about similar shootings and noticed that they talk about comparative fault — “even 90% at fault can recover 10%” — that is not Delaware. In Delaware, 1% is 100% barred. The case has to be built with that rule in mind from the start, and the firm you hire has to know it cold.
Critical Evidence That Will Disappear Within Days
This section is the one we wish every family could read on the day of the incident. Every piece of evidence on this list is in someone else’s hands, and almost every piece of it disappears on a clock that is shorter than the two-year statute of limitations. We are going to name what exists, who holds it, and how fast it dies.
Hospital CCTV and video surveillance. Wilmington Hospital, like every hospital system of its size, runs a camera network covering the entrances, lobby, emergency department, ground floor, elevators, stairwells, parking areas, and service corridors. The cameras captured the shooter’s entry method, his path through the building, his behavior before the shooting, the response of staff and security, and the timeline of the lockdown. Most hospital systems overwrite CCTV on a 7-to-30-day rolling loop. The footage from June 16, 2026 may already be gone by the time you read this. The litigation-hold letter goes out today. Delaware counsel serves it on ChristianaCare’s general counsel and on the IT director who controls the retention system, and it covers every camera on campus for the 24 hours before and after the shooting, with a sworn certification of preservation required back within 14 days.
Badge and access-control system logs. The hospital runs an electronic entry system — HID, Lenel, or a comparable platform — that records every badge tap, every door open, every failed access attempt. This is the single most important piece of evidence in the negligent-entrustment case. If the shooter used a current employee badge, the logs show it. If he used a deactivated badge that should have been shut off when his employment ended, the logs show it. If he tailgated an authorized entrant, the timing data shows the gap. These logs auto-purge on routine schedules, sometimes within days. The preservation demand goes out within 48 hours of your call — to ChristianaCare’s security director and IT director, with a request for the full audit trail for 30 days before the incident through 30 days after.
The shooter’s personnel file (if he is or was an employee). The HR file contains the background check, the references, the application, the performance reviews, any disciplinary actions, any EAP referrals, the weapons-policy acknowledgments, the date of separation, and the date access credentials were deactivated. Routine records-destruction schedules can purge this material in a year or two after separation. The records-preservation letter must reach ChristianaCare’s HR and legal departments before the next destruction cycle.
Prior incident reports, risk assessments, OSHA 300 logs, and Joint Commission survey reports. This is the foreseeability backbone of the case. If ChristianaCare had prior violent incidents on or near campus in the last five years — threats, assaults, weapons recovered, domestic-violence incidents involving employees, gang-related confrontations — that is the evidence that armed intrusion was foreseeable. The Joint Commission requires hospitals to maintain documented risk assessments under its Workplace Violence Prevention standards (effective January 2022). The OSHA 300 log records work-related injuries, and workplace-violence injuries are reportable. The IAHSS publishes industry guidance. ChristianaCare is almost certain to claim some form of privilege over the internal risk assessments. We overcome that with a combination of preservation letter, Rule 34 production demand, and motion to compel as needed. The demand goes out in week one and is followed up with a court order in month two if necessary.
Wilmington PD, New Castle County PD, Delaware State Police, and FBI Baltimore investigative files. The 911 audio, dispatch logs, body-cam footage, scene photos, ballistic reports, witness statements, and the criminal investigative file are the official record of what happened. Delaware’s Freedom of Information Act, 29 Del. C. § 10001, gives us a statutory right to those records (with statutory exemptions for active investigations, which we work around with rolling requests as the case progresses). FOIA requests go out in week one. We follow up with subpoenas under Delaware Superior Court rules for any material the agencies claim is exempt.
Visitor management system logs, ED triage records, and patient admission records. These identify the witnesses — everyone who was in the hospital that afternoon — and they identify the patients and staff who were locked down during the SWAT sweep, some of whom may have NIED claims of their own. Visitor data is purged within 30 to 90 days at most institutions. The preservation demand goes out this week.
Hospital radio traffic, PA announcements, lockdown drill history, and active-shooter training records. The hospital’s actual response — how long it took to initiate lockdown, what the staff was told, whether anyone ran the Run-Hide-Fight protocol — is measured against the hospital’s own written policies and industry standards. Training records show whether staff were actually trained to do what the policy required. These records are demanded in the Rule 34 production request in month one.
Insurance policies. ChristianaCare carries general liability, excess, and umbrella coverage, and large hospital systems almost always carry a separate violence-coverage endorsement. The total available coverage pool is typically between $10 million and $50 million. We demand policy disclosure to ChristianaCare’s broker and the carrier in the first 60 days, and we use the policy-limits exposure analysis to drive an early insurance tender. The disclosure demand goes out in the first two months.
Cell phone records of the shooter and the decedent. These establish the relationship between them — whether this was a domestic-violence incident the hospital should have prevented on its premises, whether the shooter had been making threats, whether the decedent had reported concerns. The records require a preservation letter to the carriers and a court order for content. The preservation request goes out in week two.
ATF trace and serial-number history of the firearm. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives runs a trace on every firearm recovered in a criminal investigation. The trace shows the chain of custody and may identify a straw purchaser or a prior owner. If the shooter was a prohibited possessor, the negligent-hiring case gets stronger. ATF traces take weeks to generate. The preservation request goes out in week two.
Every one of these clocks is running. The preservation letter for the CCTV should already be out. The badge-log demand should be on its way. The FOIA requests to the four investigating agencies should be in the mail. If the firm you are talking to is not talking about these specific pieces of evidence and the specific days they have left, you are talking to the wrong firm.
The Insurance Adjuster Playbook — and How We Counter It
ChristianaCare and its insurance carrier are not waiting for your family to decide whether to hire a lawyer. They are working the case right now. We can tell you what they are doing because Lupe Peña spent years on that side of the table, in the rooms where this playbook is run, before he came to fight for victims. Here is what is coming, in the order it usually comes.
Play 1: The sympathetic statement. You have already seen this one. Jennifer Schwartz, the incoming CEO, put out a statement saying the hospital’s “hearts are with the victims” and calling the incident “tragic and deeply painful.” The mayor called it “senseless.” The governor called it “sobering.” These statements are not just public-relations. They are the opening move in a narrative that frames the hospital as a fellow victim, not a defendant. By the time your family is ready to talk to a lawyer, the public story is that this was an unspeakable tragedy that happened to a good hospital. We are not moved by it. We are working the evidence.
Play 2: The friendly adjuster call. Within 24 to 72 hours of the incident, an adjuster or a “patient-relations representative” from ChristianaCare’s insurance carrier is going to call your family. The tone will be warm. The voice will say they are “so sorry for what happened” and that they “just want to make sure you are okay.” Somewhere in the call, they are going to ask you to “walk us through what happened” or “tell us a little about your loved one.” That is a recorded statement. It is built to be quoted against you later. The first question is always, “How is your loved one doing?” — and the answer they want is some version of “they are doing okay,” because the carrier will then point to your words to argue the injury is not as serious as the family now claims. You do not give a recorded statement. You refer all calls to us. The first call we have with the carrier is the only call we have with the carrier, and we set the terms.
Play 3: The “targeted and isolated incident” framing. Chief Campos used the phrase first, but the defense will own it for the rest of the case. The argument is that because the shooting was targeted, the hospital had no general duty to prevent it, and the only relevant question is the shooter’s individual conduct. Under Delaware law, that is not how foreseeability works. A targeted shooting on a documented high-crime block where the hospital had no metal detectors, limited armed security, and inadequate access control is exactly the kind of foreseeable violent intrusion that a negligent-security claim is built to address. The “targeted” label does not eliminate the duty; it changes what kinds of security measures were reasonable, and the standard is the same.
Play 4: The “we’re investigating internally” delay. ChristianaCare will announce an “internal investigation” or a “third-party review” of the security program. This is designed to do two things: control the timeline of when information comes out, and create a basis for claiming privilege over the resulting materials. The internal investigation is not your friend. We do not wait for it. Our preservation letter, our FOIA requests, our Rule 34 production demand, and our motion to compel run on our own clock, not the hospital’s.
Play 5: The “industry standard” defense. When the security-posture evidence comes out, the defense will argue that ChristianaCare met the IAHSS guidelines, complied with Joint Commission standards, and followed generally accepted hospital security practices. Our expert — a former IAHSS leader or a former Joint Commission surveyor — will testify about what those standards actually require for a hospital in a documented high-crime urban area, and the gap between the standard and the actual practice. The IAHSS guideline is a floor, not a ceiling, and a hospital that knows it sits in a high-incident zone is held to a higher standard than a hospital in a low-crime suburb.
Play 6: The “badge logs are security-sensitive” resistance. When we demand the badge-system audit trail, ChristianaCare will resist on the grounds that the logs reveal security-sensitive information about the building. We get around this with a Delaware Superior Court protective order that limits the use of the logs to this case and requires the production under seal where appropriate. The logs are not privileged, and the security-sensitivity argument is not a basis for non-production — it is a basis for a confidentiality order, which is a much smaller ask.
Play 7: The contributory-negligence play. We covered this in its own section. The defense will argue that the decedent was somehow at fault — that the decedent was involved with the shooter, that the decedent knew of the risk, that the decedent’s conduct contributed to the harm. The defense has the burden of proof. We build the record that forecloses the play before they can establish it.
Play 8: The slow insurance tender. Even when the carrier knows it has a bad case, it will delay. The first offer arrives late. The offer is low. The carrier asks for a release that is broader than the case warrants. We do not accept early lowball offers on cases like this. The preservation letter, the discovery, the expert exchange, and the depositions build the value of the case. The tender comes after the 30(b)(6) deposition, not before it.
If you want to see what the playbook looks like from the inside, our guide to what not to say to an insurance adjuster walks through the recorded-statement trap in detail.
We have seen this playbook run on too many families. We know what each play looks like, and we know how to counter it before it lands.
Compensation Available — What Delaware Law Actually Allows
What your family can recover in Delaware is real money, and we want to be honest with you about the ceiling and the floor of the case before you sign anything.
The range. For the combined wrongful-death and survival claims, cases like this typically resolve in the range of $1.5 million to $7.5 million, with the strongest cases (young decedents with dependent children, clear prior-incident evidence of foreseeability, documented OSHA or Joint Commission violations, shooter-as-employee facts) pushing toward or past the upper end. The injured survivor’s claim, if there is a separate injured victim who survived, is a separate, additive value pool of $250,000 to $3 million depending on the permanence of the injury. We will not quote you a specific number on the first call — we do not have the medical records, the personnel file, the badge logs, or the risk assessments yet — but the range above is what the comparable cases in this jurisdiction actually produce.
What is in the number. Economic damages include the decedent’s pre-death medical and emergency-department expenses, funeral and burial costs, the projected lifetime lost wages and benefits (using Delaware-specific wage data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics), and the reasonable value of household services the decedent would have provided. Non-economic damages in a hospital shooting — a place where people are entitled to feel safe — are substantial: loss of companionship, guidance, consortium, and mental anguish to the surviving spouse and children, plus the decedent’s own pre-death pain and suffering captured in the survival action. The loss-of-consortium claim belongs to the surviving spouse in their individual capacity, and it is a separate claim from the wrongful-death action.
What is not in the number — the Delaware limitation. Delaware is one of a small number of states that does not allow punitive damages in wrongful-death actions. That is a meaningful ceiling on the case value compared to a similar fact pattern in Texas, New Mexico, or California, where juries can return multi-million-dollar punitive verdicts against corporate defendants. We tell you this not to discourage you but because we will not sell your family on a number the law does not support. The punitive-damages lever moves in this case through the survival action — if we can show that ChristianaCare’s security failures rose to malice or wanton disregard, the survival claim supports punitive damages even though the wrongful-death claim does not. The Joint Commission’s 2022 workplace-violence standards, the OSHA General Duty Clause, the IAHSS guidelines, and any prior violent-incident reports or internal risk assessments that were ignored are the evidence that supports the punitive ask.
The insurance pool. ChristianaCare carries general liability, excess, and umbrella coverage, and a hospital system of its size almost always carries a separate violence-coverage endorsement. The total available coverage pool is typically between $10 million and $50 million, and that is the upper bound of what is realistically recoverable short of a personal judgment against an individual defendant with assets. We identify every layer of coverage in the first 60 days, and we use the full policy-limits exposure analysis to drive an early insurance tender.
The collateral-source rule. Delaware follows the collateral-source rule, which means the defendant’s insurance carrier cannot reduce your family’s recovery by the amount of any life insurance, survivor benefits, workers’ compensation, or other collateral source your family receives. The hospital’s carrier pays its full share regardless of what other sources cover.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The Manginello Law Firm has recovered more than $50 million for clients since 1998, including wrongful-death and truck-crash results in the seven-figure range, but no past result guarantees what any specific case will produce. We will tell you honestly what we think your case is worth when we have seen the evidence, and we will not promise a number we cannot stand behind.
How We Build the Case — The Proof Story
This is what the case actually looks like from the inside, week by week, in the order the work happens.
Week one. The preservation letter goes out the day you call. It goes to ChristianaCare’s general counsel, IT director, security director, HR director, and risk-management department. It covers CCTV, badge logs, visitor logs, the personnel file on the shooter (if employee), prior incident reports, risk assessments, OSHA logs, Joint Commission surveys, and training records. The same day, FOIA requests go to Wilmington PD, New Castle County PD, Delaware State Police, and the FBI Baltimore field office. The ATF gets a firearm-trace preservation request. The cell phone carriers get a preservation letter for the shooter’s and decedent’s records. By the end of week one, the evidence clock is frozen in as many places as we can reach it.
Weeks two through four. We retain the experts. A hospital-security expert (former IAHSS chair or ex-Joint Commission surveyor) benchmarks the security posture against the standards. A forensic criminologist evaluates the foreseeability question using the public crime data, the hospital’s prior incident reports, and the surrounding neighborhood analysis. A life-care planner and economist are retained if the injury profile requires them. We interview the witnesses while their memories are fresh — the patient guide, the staff who were on the floor, the patients who were locked down, the family members who were waiting outside. We file the complaint in New Castle County Superior Court, naming ChristianaCare, the private security contractor (if any), the shooter, and any adjacent property owner whose role the evidence supports. Service follows within days. The clock on Delaware’s two-year statute of limitations is no longer the family’s worry.
Months two through four. Rule 34 production demand and Rule 30(b)(6) deposition notice go out to ChristianaCare. The 30(b)(6) topics cover security policies, prior incidents, training, badge audits, risk assessments, the shooter’s personnel file, and the hospital’s response on the day of the incident. The defense pushes back on every topic. We push harder. Where the production is incomplete, we file motions to compel. The expert exchange follows, and the security expert’s report is the document that frames the case for everyone at the table — the defense sees the gap between the standard and the actual practice, and the carrier starts to recalculate its reserve.
Months four through nine. Depositions. 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. The Wilmington PD lead investigator. The risk-management director who decided not to install metal detectors or not to staff the 500 block entrance with an armed guard. Each deposition is taken under oath, with the witness’s prior statements in hand, and the transcript becomes part of the trial record. The defense’s expert is deposed. Our expert is deposed by the defense. The medical and economic experts finalize their reports.
Months nine through twelve. Mediation. Delaware Superior Court requires mediation in most civil cases, and the timing is right — we have the evidence, the experts, and the depositions, and the carrier has a clear picture of the exposure. A skilled mediator drives a real negotiation. Cases like this often resolve at mediation when the defense sees the strength of the security-posture evidence, the foreseeability record, and the survival-action punitive exposure. The ones that do not resolve proceed to trial.
Trial. A hospital negligent-security case tried in New Castle County Superior Court in 2026 or 2027 is tried to a jury of twelve Delaware citizens, drawn from the same community where the hospital sits. Voir dire probes jury attitudes on hospital accountability, on gun rights, on the contributory-negligence rule, and on Wilmington’s crime patterns. The trial itself runs one to three weeks depending on the number of defendants and the complexity of the expert testimony. The verdict is final subject to post-trial motions and appeal.
We have run cases like this — preservation letter to verdict — for 27+ years. Ralph Manginello has tried cases in federal court. Lupe Peña knows the playbook from the inside. The work is the same in Delaware as it is in any other jurisdiction: freeze the evidence, build the record, take the depositions, try the case. The Delaware-specific rules (pure contributory negligence, no punitive damages in wrongful death, two-year statute of limitations, proportionate fault for non-economic damages under 10 Del. C. § 6302) shape the strategy, but the bones of the case are universal.
For a broader look at how wrongful-death and survival cases are built across jurisdictions, our guide to wrongful-death claims walks through the framework in detail.
What To Do (and NOT Do) in the First 72 Hours
If you are reading this within hours or days of the shooting, this section is the part of the page that matters most right now. The next three days will determine the shape of the case more than any three days that follow.
Do this first.
- Get medical attention for the injured survivor. The survivor needs to be evaluated for injuries that may not show symptoms for hours or days. Some internal injuries present late. Psychological trauma is real and is a documented injury, not a weakness. The medical record from this evaluation is also evidence.
- Connect with grief counseling before you talk to anyone about the case. The Delaware Victims’ Compensation Assistance Program (11 Del. C. § 9001) provides counseling and financial assistance to victims of violent crime and their families. We can connect you with the application process.
- Preserve everything you have. Every text message, every email, every voicemail from the hospital, every social-media post about the incident, every photo from that day, every piece of paper the police or the hospital handed you. Do not delete anything. Do not edit anything. Screenshot what is online. We need it all.
- Refer every call to us. The hospital’s insurance adjuster, the hospital’s patient-relations representative, the hospital’s risk-management department, the shooter’s family’s lawyer, the police detective who calls “just to update you” — every one of these calls is either a recorded statement waiting to happen, a recorded statement already happening, or a witness interview the other side is building. You do not give a recorded statement. You do not sign a release. You do not agree to a meeting. You say, “I am not able to discuss this. Please contact my attorney,” and you give them our number.
- Write down everything you remember. While it is fresh. The timeline. The names. The faces. The sounds. What the hospital staff said. What the police said. What your loved one said in the last conversation you had. The details that feel small now are the details that decide cases a year from now.
Do not do this.
- Do not post about the incident on social media. The defense will mine your family’s accounts for any statement that can be used to argue the decedent was at fault, the family is exaggerating, or the injury is not as serious as claimed. Adjust your privacy settings, ask your family members to do the same, and stay off the platforms until we tell you it is safe to speak.
- Do not talk to the press without our guidance. The case will generate press coverage, and you may be approached for comment. Anything you say publicly is discoverable. We will help you decide when and how to speak, if at all.
- Do not let the hospital retain your loved one’s belongings, your family’s medical records from the day, or any other physical evidence without a chain-of-custody record. We need to know what the hospital has, where it is, and who has touched it.
- Do not accept any payment from the hospital or its insurer. There is no such thing as a “quick” or “compassionate” payment that does not come with strings attached. Any check that arrives in the next 30 to 60 days will have a release printed on the back or will be accompanied by a release document. Once signed, your right to pursue the case is gone. The release is the trap, and it is the most common reason families with strong cases end up with no recovery at all.
- Do not destroy anything. The temptation to put the day behind you is real, and the impulse to clean out a phone, a closet, a car, a desk is normal. Do not. Every piece of paper, every text, every photo, every email is either evidence or it is not. We will tell you which is which. Until then, it all stays.
The single most important thing. The single most important thing you can do in the next 72 hours is call us. The consultation is free. The call is confidential. There is no fee unless we win. We will tell you what to preserve, who to refer, and when to act. We will handle the preservation letter, the FOIA requests, the expert retention, and the complaint. You handle your family. We handle the fight.
The clock is running. The hospital’s lawyers started the day of the shooting. We start when you call.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who can file a wrongful-death lawsuit in Delaware after a hospital shooting?
Only the personal representative of the deceased person’s estate may file the wrongful-death action, on behalf of the statutory beneficiaries in priority order: surviving spouse first, then children (or their lineal descendants by right of representation), then parents if there is no spouse or child, and only then siblings or grandparents. We handle the personal-representative appointment with the Delaware Register of Wills in New Castle County as part of the case. The survival action is brought by the same personal representative on behalf of the estate for the decedent’s pre-death pain, suffering, medical expenses, and lost wages.
How long do I have to file?
Delaware gives you two years from the date of death to file both the wrongful-death and the survival action under 10 Del. C. § 3724 and § 3725. The evidence clock is much shorter — days to weeks for the most important records — and the case is won or lost in the first month, not the last.
What if my loved one was the target of the shooting?
The “targeted” nature of the shooting does not eliminate ChristianaCare’s duty to maintain reasonable security. Under Delaware law, a targeted shooting on a documented high-crime block where the hospital failed to take reasonable security measures is exactly the kind of foreseeable harm a negligent-security claim addresses. The fact that the shooter chose a specific person does not mean the hospital had no duty to screen entrants, control access, or maintain a security posture appropriate to the risk. The “targeted” label is the defense’s first play, and we counter it with the foreseeability evidence.
Can I sue the hospital if the shooter was an employee?
Yes, on multiple theories. Negligent hiring (failure to screen the employee before hiring), negligent retention (failure to respond to red-flag behavior during employment), negligent training (failure to provide de-escalation and workplace-violence training), negligent supervision (failure to monitor and manage the employee), and negligent entrustment (failure to deactivate the employee’s badge and access credentials upon termination). The personnel file, the badge-system audit trail, and the prior incident reports are the evidence.
What if my loved one was an employee of the hospital who was shot by another employee?
Workers’ compensation is typically the exclusive remedy against your loved one’s own employer for the work-related injury — that is Delaware’s workers’ compensation exclusivity rule. But workers’ compensation does not bar a separate claim against the hospital as the property owner for negligent security, against the shooter personally, or against a third-party contractor. We evaluate the structure of the case to identify every available defendant. Workers’ comp pays a capped weekly benefit; the third-party claim pursues full damages. Our workplace accident practice page covers this fork in detail.
How much is my case worth?
The combined wrongful-death and survival claim in a hospital negligent-security case in Delaware typically falls in the range of $1.5 million to $7.5 million, with the strongest cases (young decedents with dependent children, clear foreseeability evidence, shooter-as-employee facts) pushing toward or past the upper end. The injured survivor’s claim is a separate, additive value pool of $250,000 to $3 million depending on the permanence of the injury. Delaware’s no-punitive-damages rule in wrongful death is a meaningful ceiling compared to other states. We do not quote a specific number until we have seen the evidence, and we do not promise a number we cannot stand behind. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
Do I have to talk to the insurance adjuster?
No. You do not give a recorded statement. You do not sign a release. You do not agree to a meeting. You refer every call to us. The adjuster’s job is to minimize the case value, and the recorded-statement call is the single most common tool used to do it. Our guide to how contingency fees work explains the fee structure so you understand what you are and are not paying for.
What if I cannot afford a lawyer?
You do not pay us unless we win. The Manginello Law Firm works on a contingency-fee basis for cases like this. The consultation is free, the investigation is at our cost, and the fee is a percentage of the recovery. If there is no recovery, you owe us nothing. The economics of the case are aligned with your family from day one.
Can I get compensation if my loved one survived the shooting?
Yes. The injured survivor has a separate personal-injury claim against ChristianaCare and any other liable party, with full economic damages (medical, lost wages, future earning capacity, future medical) and full non-economic damages (pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life). If the injury is permanent, the claim includes life-care-plan damages and may include future lost earning capacity. The injured survivor may also have a negligent-infliction-of-emotional-distress claim and, if they witnessed the death of another victim, additional derivative claims.
What about the shooter’s assets?
The shooter is a 23-year-old with no visible assets. Civil recovery against him personally is typically limited by collectability. We name him anyway because a personal judgment creates pressure against any insurance policy in his name at the time of the incident and preserves the option of post-judgment collection against any future assets or earnings.
What if the hospital claims it did everything right?
The hospital will claim that. It is the standard defense. Our security expert — a former IAHSS leader or ex-Joint Commission surveyor — benchmarks the hospital’s actual security posture against the published standards and against what a reasonable hospital in a documented high-crime area would have done. The gap between the standard and the actual practice is the case. If the gap is wide enough, the conduct crosses the line from negligence into wanton disregard, and the survival-action punitive-damages theory comes into play.
How long will the case take?
A hospital negligent-security case in Delaware typically takes 12 to 24 months from filing to resolution, with most cases resolving at mediation after the expert exchange and the depositions are complete. The first 60 to 90 days are the most active — preservation, complaint, discovery initiation, expert retention. The pace slows through depositions and mediation, and the case either settles or proceeds to trial. We will give you a realistic timeline on the first call once we understand the scope of the case.
A Free, Confidential Case Review — How to Reach Us
How to reach us. The call is free. The call is confidential. There is no fee unless we win. We represent families in catastrophic-injury and wrongful-death cases across multiple states, and we have the trial capability and the resources to handle a case of this magnitude wherever the venue requires. Where local bar admission is needed for filings, we work with local counsel to ensure the case is properly venued and prosecuted.
Ralph Manginello is the managing partner. He has spent 27+ years in courtrooms, including federal court, fighting exactly the kind of institutional defendant that just failed your family. Before he was a lawyer he was a journalist, and he still explains a case the way a good reporter would — clearly, completely, and without legalese. He was a starting point guard on a New England prep school championship basketball team, which he will tell you is the only background that really prepares you for trial work. The firm he founded in 2001, The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC, doing business as Attorney911, has recovered more than $50 million for clients since 1998. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. He is admitted to practice in the State Bar of Texas (since 1998) and in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, and he carries a Martindale-Hubbell Peer Review Rating (since 2018) and an Avvo rating of 8.2 with a Client’s Choice badge.
Lupe Peña is the firm’s associate attorney. Before he came to fight for victims, he spent years on the other side of the table — inside a national insurance-defense firm, in the rooms where adjusters and their software priced cases like yours. He knows the playbook the carrier is running on your family right now because he used to help run it. He now uses that knowledge against the carriers, in English and in Spanish — full legal service in either language. He is a third-generation Texan with family roots tying to the King Ranch, and he brings the same fierce loyalty to your case that he brought to his previous practice.
The consultation is free, the call is confidential, and there is no fee unless we win. We send the preservation letter the day you call. We file the FOIA requests the same day. We retain the experts within the first 30 days. We file the complaint within the first 60 days. We do not wait, and we do not let the hospital’s lawyers set the pace.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. The line is answered 24 hours a day, every day. If you would rather we reach out to you, our contact page is the fastest way to start the conversation. To learn more about Ralph, his background, and his approach, his attorney page is here; for Lupe and the insider perspective on the insurance-defense playbook, his attorney page is here. Hablamos Español. Servicios legales completos en español.
Your family was failed by a hospital that should have kept you safe. The criminal case will pursue the shooter. The civil case will pursue the institution. We do that work, and we do it with the trial capability and the resources to finish. The consultation is free. The call is confidential. There is no fee unless we win.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911.