UPMC physician’s assistant says he told shooter his loved one had died
Updated: 9:31 PM EST Feb 23, 2025
Lester Mendoza, a physician’s assistant at UPMC Memorial Hospital in York, said he helped tell the shooter a loved one had passed days before the shooting. Mendoza took to Facebook on Sunday to call for changes in the healthcare industry and to share his story of interacting with the shooter, Diogenes Archangel-Ortiz, days before he held staff hostage and shot six people, killing a police officer at UPMC Memorial Hospital. “I spoke with the very man who did this act, interacting with him multiple days. I was there when we delivered the worst news imaginable to him — that his loved one was gone. I saw his devastation firsthand. In that moment, I truly did not see a monster. He was simply broken. Just the day prior, my colleague and I shared our own personal memories of experience of loss with this man. We developed a human connection as he showed us pictures of his loved one, an engagement gift of a beautiful pink and white necklace and watch, which I thanked him for sharing and he thanked me for sharing mine. I would have never imagined or expected him to do something like this. But grief, exhaustion, isolation, and a lack of mental health and social support services create cracks that people fall through. And when they do, the consequences can be catastrophic.”Mendoza also spoke of the stressors of being expected to provide limitless care with limited resources, and how doing so ultimately fails patients. “Burnout isn’t just a buzzword — it’s the slow erosion of our ability to feel, to connect, to care the way we once did. The longer we are stretched thin, the more we risk becoming numb, jaded, and detached — not because we don’t care, but because we are drowning.”He also thanked fallen officer Andrew Duarte for his sacrifice that prevented additional losses and police for responding to the incident “when things were too far gone.” “We are all suffering. And if we continuously ignore it, and accept it as the normal, there will be no positive growth or change,” said Mendoza. His full post on Facebook can be read here.
YORK, Pa. —Lester Mendoza, a physician’s assistant at UPMC Memorial Hospital in York, said he helped tell the shooter a loved one had passed days before the shooting.
Mendoza took to Facebook on Sunday to call for changes in the healthcare industry and to share his story of interacting with the shooter, Diogenes Archangel-Ortiz, days before he held staff hostage and shot six people, killing a police officer at UPMC Memorial Hospital.
“I spoke with the very man who did this act, interacting with him multiple days. I was there when we delivered the worst news imaginable to him — that his loved one was gone. I saw his devastation firsthand. In that moment, I truly did not see a monster. He was simply broken. Just the day prior, my colleague and I shared our own personal memories of experience of loss with this man. We developed a human connection as he showed us pictures of his loved one, an engagement gift of a beautiful pink and white necklace and watch, which I thanked him for sharing and he thanked me for sharing mine. I would have never imagined or expected him to do something like this. But grief, exhaustion, isolation, and a lack of mental health and social support services create cracks that people fall through. And when they do, the consequences can be catastrophic.”
Mendoza also spoke of the stressors of being expected to provide limitless care with limited resources, and how doing so ultimately fails patients.
“Burnout isn’t just a buzzword — it’s the slow erosion of our ability to feel, to connect, to care the way we once did. The longer we are stretched thin, the more we risk becoming numb, jaded, and detached — not because we don’t care, but because we are drowning.”
He also thanked fallen officer Andrew Duarte for his sacrifice that prevented additional losses and police for responding to the incident “when things were too far gone.”
“We are all suffering. And if we continuously ignore it, and accept it as the normal, there will be no positive growth or change,” said Mendoza.
His full post on Facebook can be read here.
