Why Should Delaware Care?
Following a shooting at Wilmington Hospital that left one man dead and another injured last week, state prosecutors have charged a suspect with multiple felony crimes. As investigators put together the pieces of the incident, and the Wilmington community reels, questions remain surrounding the nature of the shooting and ChristianaCare’s protocols to respond to it.
State prosecutors indicted John Wallace-Bey on multiple felony charges Monday, following the shooting last week that killed one of his fellow ChristianaCare Wilmington Hospital interns and injured another.
Wallace-Bey, 23, was charged with the murder of 19-year-old Ethan Hillman and the attempted murder of 19-year-old Jayden Ellis, Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings announced at a Monday press conference.
Ellis was in the hospital in critical condition after the incident, but he is now “doing better,” Jennings said.
The shooting is still believed to have been a targeted, isolated incident, she added. Wallace-Bey is believed to have acted “entirely alone.”
Along with the first-degree murder and attempted murder charges, Walace-Bey also was charged with one count of carrying a concealed deadly weapon and three counts of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, Jennings said.
As Delaware’s largest city and its largest healthcare system grapple with last week’s tragedy, the investigation into exactly how and why Wallace-Bey allegedly carried out the shooting remains ongoing.
Incoming ChristianaCare CEO Jenn Schwartz also spoke at Monday’s press conference, expressing gratitude to the hospital’s medical staff who helped Ellis, the caregivers who sheltered in place with patients during the lockdown and the employees who have continued to show up to work since the shooting.
“I know many of us, including myself, are still trying to get a sense of how such an unthinkable act of violence could happen in a place where people come to heal and to be taken care of,” Schwartz said.
What we know about the shooting
Wallace-Bey, Ellis and Hillman worked together at ChristianaCare through an information technology (IT) internship program, Schwartz said.
The three men had been working on a project together inside an administrative office at ChristianaCare’s Wilmington campus, located alongside the city’s Washington Street Bridge, on the morning of Tuesday, June 16, Schwartz said at Monday’s press conference.
A ChristianaCare internal investigation revealed that Wallace-Bey had a “verbal disagreement” with Ellis and Hillman that morning, Schwartz said. Following the disagreement, Wallace-Bey told a more senior IT employee that he wanted to go home, and he was given permission to leave work.
Schwartz stressed that Walace-Bey’s decision to leave work was not a form of disciplinary action.
“He was not sent home, not fired, or disciplined in any way,” she said. “Mr. Wallace-Bey was expected to return the next day for work.”
Instead, Wallace-Bey reportedly returned to Wilmington Hospital around 3 p.m., entering the building through an employee entrance using his access badge. From there, Jennings said, he confronted Ellis and Hillman in the basement of the hospital, shooting each of them once.
It is not known how Wallace-Bey acquired the .38-caliber handgun, Jennings said. But the prosecutors’ investigation has not found any criminal record or status that would have prohibited him from owning the gun.
The gun has still not been located, she added.
Schwartz, the incoming ChristianaCare CEO, said Wilmington Hospital did not have any metal detector or weapon screening protocol at the employee entrances to the campus. There are metal detectors at all visitor entrances, however.
Hospital leaders have implemented a weapon screening procedure for employees at Wilmington Hospital since the shooting, and are “closely and quickly reviewing” the security protocols at all ChristianaCare facilities, she said.
Schwartz added that no ChristianaCare employee had expressed concerns that Wallace-Bey posed a “safety threat” to himself or others. He had undergone the pre-employment screenings required of all ChristianaCare employees.
Wallace-Bey, Ellis and Hillman had all worked at ChristianaCare since February as part of a six-month, non-clinical IT internship.
The program, a partnership with the Delaware-based code training program Code Differently, primarily housed the interns at ChristianaCare’s Newark campus, but the three men all happened to be working in Wilmington on the day of the shooting, Schwartz said.
Wilmington Hospital is a more than 600,000-square-foot facility with 321 beds. ChristianaCare’s Newark campus, also referred to as Christiana Hospital, is substantially larger with more than 1,200 beds.
Locating the suspect
Following a dramatic, multi-hour lockdown of Wilmington Hospital on the afternoon of the shooting, during which local, state and federal law enforcement agencies descended upon the campus, the Wilmington Police Department reported that Wallace-Bey had been arrested in Philadelphia.
Jennings said on Monday that Wallace-Bey was apprehended while “trying to catch an Uber” in North Philadelphia.
Immediately after the shooting, she said, he fled through the hospital’s main entrance and traveled to the Wilmington Amtrak station, where he got on a SEPTA train to Philadelphia.
It is a roughly 1.3-mile trek through downtown Wilmington from the hospital to the train station.
Jennings declined to say how Wallace-Bey was identified while on the train, but credited both federal law enforcement and the Philadelphia Police Department for helping to locate him after the shooting.
She did not address rumors that Wallace-Bey was identified through a car license plate scanner in Philadelphia, instead saying prosecutors inside the Wilmington Police Station used “various methods” to track him down.
Wallace-Bey currently remains in a Philadelphia jail. He was denied bail by the Municipal Court of Philadelphia County on June 17, and he will have an extradition hearing to be brought back to Delaware on June 29.
Hospital to examine safety protocols
ChristianaCare has faced criticism in the days since the shooting for its lack of employee entrance metal detectors and its system for notifying hospital employees of the emergency.
While Schwartz said the hospital system has since implemented weapons screening measures for employees at Wilmington Hospital, she did not say specifically what security updates the healthcare giant is considering implementing in the long-term.
“We are closely and quickly reviewing what we need to do at other locations,” she said.
Some employees and community members have questioned the notification systems that ChristianaCare employed to alert Wilmington Hospital staff of the active shooter on June 16.
Schwartz said the hospital has “a number of ways” to notify employees in a situation like this, including an overhead announcement, an emergency notification system through their internal internet servers as well as emails and text messages.
She did not specify how the hospital alerted employees of the shooter last week.
“As things unfolded, people became aware of the situation,” she said.
Schwartz said ChristianaCare has some ideas about “opportunities for improvement” for its emergency notification system, but she declined to say what they are.
Schwartz and Jennings both highlighted the bravery of ChristianaCare staff and the law enforcement officers who responded to the scene.
They said they are working to provide support services to Ellis, the surviving victim, his family, and witnesses at the hospital.
“Everyone in that hospital who was traumatized by this event is in our eyes a victim of gun violence,” Jennings said.
Maggie Reynolds is a Report for America corps member and Spotlight Delaware reporter who covers rural communities in Delaware. Your donation to match our Report for America grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://spotlightdelaware.org/support/.
