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‘Melania thought the worst had happened’: Donald Trump on Pennsylvania shooting; vows to hold more outdoor rallies | Today News

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‘Melania thought the worst had happened’: Donald Trump on Pennsylvania shooting; vows to hold more outdoor rallies | Today News


Donald Trump, the Republican Presidential candidate and former US President, on Monday revealed that his wife, Melania, was “watching live” coverage when multiple shots were fired at his election rally in Pennsylvania earlier this month.

Melania was watching the rally on television and thought, “the worst had happened,” Donald Trump said in an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham aired on Monday night. 

“She was watching live,” he added. Donald Trump said that his wife “can’t really even talk about it, which is OK,” and “that means she likes me.”

Donald Trump highlighted his wife’s immediate reaction, “When I went down, she thought the worst had happened,” suggesting his hand covered in blood as the reason for her reaction.

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“Yeah, I’m going to do rallies [outside],” Donald Trump said. Despite surviving an assassination attempt, the former US President is adamant about holding outdoor election rallies in the future.

The Secret Service has been criticised for failing to guard the roof of a manufacturing plant from which the gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, took aim at the US Presidential candidate. The assailant stationed on the roof of the building that was over 130 yards away fired shots, one of which grazed Donald Trump’s right ear. 

Days following Donald Trump’s attempted assassination attempt, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle tendered her resignation.

Following the incident, Donald Trump charged at the Secret Service and alleged, “There should have been communication with the local police, which there wasn’t.” He added, “So that’s a bad thing, and they were seeing this guy – it was a very disturbed person, and they were seeing him around.”

The Secret Service has reportedly urged Trump’s campaign team to refrain from holding any more outdoor events amid security concerns.

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Following the shooting at Butler Fair Show grounds, Pennsylvania, on July 13, all of the former US President’s campaign events have taken place indoors.



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Pennsylvania Shooting Latest in Violence Against Hospital Workers

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Pennsylvania Shooting Latest in Violence Against Hospital Workers


A man who took hostages in a Pennsylvania hospital during a shooting that killed a police officer and wounded five other people highlights the rising violence against U.S. healthcare workers and the challenge of protecting them.

Diogenes Archangel-Ortiz, 49, carried a pistol and zip ties into the intensive care unit at UPMC Memorial Hospital in southern Pennsylvania’s York County and took staff members hostage Saturday before he was killed in a shootout with police, officials said. The attack also left a doctor, nurse, custodian and two other officers wounded.

Officers opened fire as Archangel-Ortiz held at gunpoint a female staff member whose hands had been zip-tied, police said.

The man apparently intentionally targeted the hospital after he was in contact with the intensive care unit earlier in the week for medical care involving someone else, according to the York County district attorney.

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Such violence at hospitals is on the rise, often in emergency departments but also maternity wards and intensive care units, hospital security consultant Dick Sem said.

“Many people are more confrontational, quicker to become angry, quicker to become threatening,” Sem said. “I interview thousands of nurses and hear all the time about how they’re being abused every day.”

Archangel-Ortiz’s motives remained unclear but nurses report increasing harassment from the public, especially following the coronavirus pandemic, said Sem, former director of security and crisis management for Waste Management and vice president at Pinkerton/Securitas.

In hospital attacks, unlike random mass shootings elsewhere, the shooter is often targeting somebody, sometimes resentful about the care given a relative who died, Sem noted.

“It tends to be someone who’s mad at somebody,” Sem said. “It might be a domestic violence situation or employees, ex-employees. There’s all kinds of variables.”

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At WellSpan Health, a nearby hospital where some of the victims were taken, Megan Foltz said she has been worried about violence since she began working as a nurse nearly 20 years ago.

“In the critical care environment, of course there’s going to be heightened emotions. People are losing loved ones. There can be gang violence, domestic violence. Inebriated individuals,” Foltz said.

Besides the fear of being hurt themselves, nurses fear leaving their patients unguarded.

“If you step away from a bedside to run, to hide, to keep safe, you’re leaving your patient vulnerable,” she said.

Healthcare and social assistance employees suffered almost three-quarters of nonfatal attacks on workers in the private sector in 2021 and 2022 for a rate more than five times the national average, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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Other recent attacks on U.S. healthcare workers include:

  • Last year, a man shot two corrections officers in the ambulance bay of an Idaho hospital while freeing a white supremacist gang member before he could be returned to prison. They were caught less than two days later.
  • In 2023, a gunman killed a security guard and wounded a hospital worker in a Portland, Oregon, hospital’s maternity unit before being killed by police in a confrontation elsewhere. Also in 2023, a man opened fire in a medical center waiting room in Atlanta, killing one woman and wounding four.
  • In 2022, a gunman killed his surgeon and three other people at a Tulsa, Oklahoma, medical office because he blamed the doctor for his continuing pain after an operation. Later that year, a man killed two workers at a Dallas hospital while there to watch his child’s birth.

The shooting is part of a wave of gun violence in recent years that has swept through U.S. hospitals and medical centers, which have struggled to adapt to the growing threats.

With rising violence, more hospitals are using metal detectors and screening visitors for threats at hospital entrances including emergency departments.

Many hospital workers say after an attack that they never expected to be targeted.

Sem said training can be critical in helping medical staff identify those who might become violent.

“More than half of these incidents I’m aware of showed some early warning signs from early indicators that this person is problematic. They’re threatening, they’re angry. And so that needs to be reported. That needs to be managed,” he said.

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“If nobody reports it, then you don’t know until the gun appears.”

—Associated Press writer Chris Weber contributed to this report from Los Angeles.



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Police officer and suspect who took hostages at Pennsylvania hospital killed in shootout

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Police officer and suspect who took hostages at Pennsylvania hospital killed in shootout


A man armed with a pistol and carrying zip ties entered a Pennsylvania hospital’s intensive care unit Saturday and took staff members hostage before he was killed by police in a shootout that also left an officer dead, authorities said.

Three workers at UPMC Memorial hospital, including a doctor, a nurse and a custodian, and two other officers were shot and wounded in the attack, York county district attorney Tim Barker said. A fourth staffer was injured in a fall.

Gunfire erupted after officers went to engage the shooter, whom Barker identified as Diogenes Archangel-Ortiz, 49. He said Archangel-Ortiz was holding at gunpoint a female staff member who had her hands bound with zip ties when police opened fire.

“This is a huge loss to our community,” Barker said at a news conference following the shooting. “It is absolutely clear, and beyond any and all doubt, that the officers were justified in taking their action using deadly force.”

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Barker added that while the investigation is in its early stages, it appears Archangel-Ortiz had previous contact with the hospital’s ICU earlier in the week for “a medical purpose involving another individual” – and he intentionally targeted the workers there.

No one answered the door on Saturday at an address in York believed to be that of Archangel-Ortiz.

The officer who died was identified as Andrew Duarte of the West York borough police department.

“We all have broken hearts and are grieving at his loss,” West York borough manager Shawn Mauck told the Associated Press.

Duarte was a law enforcement veteran who joined the department in 2022 after five years with the Denver Police Department, according to his LinkedIn profile. He described receiving a “hero award” in 2021 from Mothers Against Drunk Driving for his work in impaired driving enforcement for the state of Colorado.

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“I have a type A personality and like to succeed in all that I do,” his LinkedIn profile said.

Duarte also worked as a patrol officer in Denver, was highly regarded for his work and was close friends with other officers, the department there said in a statement.

The Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, said he met on Saturday evening with Duarte’s parents and fellow officers who were wounded.

“Their willingness to run toward danger helped save the lives of others,” Shapiro said on the social platform X. “I’m grateful to them and all law enforcement who answered the call today in York.”

At a makeshift memorial on the front steps of the West York Borough Police Department, Linda Shields dropped off roses Saturday and dabbed tears as she thought of her son, a police officer in Maryland.

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“He was so young,” Shields said of Duarte. “It makes no sense at all.”

Shapiro called the attack on police and health care workers “the act of a coward”.

UPMC Memorial is a five-story, 104-bed hospital that opened in 2019 in York, a city of about 40,000 people known for its creation of York Peppermint Patties in 1940.

Saturday’s attack was one of more than 35 mass shootings in the US so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonpartisan resource which defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more victims are wounded or killed.

The perennially high numbers of mass shootings in the US have prompted many in the country to call for more substantial gun control, though Congress has been mostly unwilling or unable to enact such measures.

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The attack on Saturday was also part of a wave of gun violence in recent years that has swept through US hospitals and medical centers, which have struggled to adapt to the growing threats. Such attacks have helped make healthcare one of the nation’s most violent fields, with workers suffering more nonfatal injuries from workplace violence than workers in any other profession, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In 2023, a shooter killed a security guard in the lobby of New Hampshire’s state psychiatric hospital before being fatally shot by a state trooper. An Oregon hospital security guard was shot to death while protecting a maternity ward from an attacker that year, too.

In 2022, a man killed two workers at a Dallas hospital while there to watch his child’s birth. In May of that year, a man opened fire in a medical center waiting room in Atlanta, killing one woman and wounding four. And just one month later, a gunman killed his surgeon and three other people at a Tulsa, Oklahoma, medical office because he blamed the doctor for his continuing pain after an operation.



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Gunman killed after shots fired at Pennsylvania hospital

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Gunman killed after shots fired at Pennsylvania hospital


A gunman has been killed after shots were fired on Saturday at a hospital in central Pennsylvania, officials said.

Officials at UPMC memorial in York said that no patients had been injured and that the gunman was dead. The extent of any other injuries was unclear.

Law enforcement were on the premises and managing the situation, Susan Manko, vice-president of public relations for UPMC, said in an emailed statement.

The hospital asked employees who had not been scheduled to work Saturday to stay home, in a statement on its website.

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Families of patients arriving on site should report to the parking lot of the OSS building across the street from the hospital, Manko said.

The Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, said in a social media post he is on the way to the hospital after being briefed on the shooting. He said the hospital is “secure”.

UPMC Memorial is a five-story, 104-bed hospital that opened in 2019 in York, a city of about 40,000 people known for its creation of York Peppermint Patties in 1940.

The shooting is part of a wave of gun violence in recent years that has swept through US hospitals and medical centers, which have struggled to adapt to the growing threats. Such attacks have helped make healthcare one of the nation’s most violent fields, with workers suffering more non-fatal injuries from workplace violence than workers in any other profession, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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In 2023, a shooter killed a security guard in the lobby of New Hampshire’s state psychiatric hospital before being fatally shot by a state trooper. In 2022, a man killed two workers at a Dallas hospital while there to watch his child’s birth. In May of that year, a man opened fire in a medical center waiting room in Atlanta, killing one woman and wounding four. Just one month later, a gunman killed his surgeon and three other people at a Tulsa, Oklahoma, medical office because he blamed the doctor for his continuing pain after an operation.



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