Emergency room security guard shot and wounded in Arizona; man arrested

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — A security guard at an Arizona hospital was shot and wounded over the weekend, and the man suspected in the attack was quickly disarmed and taken into custody, authorities say.

The security guard was shot around 1 p.m. Sunday inside the emergency room at HonorHealth Scottsdale Shea Medical Center, Scottsdale Police said in a news release.

The shooting was the latest in a series of incidents of increasing violence against U.S. healthcare workers and highlighted the challenges of protecting them.

The 30-year-old suspect was disarmed and detained by other members of the security team and staff before arriving officers arrested him, police said.

Police on Monday identified the suspect as Maximillian Yanofsky. He was booked into the Maricopa County Jail on multiple charges including aggravated assault, police said.

Efforts to contact a lawyer for Yanofsky on Monday weren’t immediately successful.

The security guard was taken to a trauma center for a higher level of care and remained hospitalized Monday, police said. A different security guard was injured in the hand and wrist during the incident, police said.

Police said Yanofsky had been taken to HonorHealth Shea earlier in the day as a potential patient.

No reason for the shooting was given. Police said officers were called about a disturbance in the emergency room that escalated to an altercation with security. Police said that during the altercation, Yanofsky took out a gun and shot the guard once in the upper body.

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

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.

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.