It took two years, but
Dr Henry Bello made good on his threats.
Associated
Press report continues:
After
he was forced to resign as a family medicine doctor amid sexual harassment
allegations, he told colleagues he would be back to kill them.
On
Friday, Bello returned to Bronx Lebanon Hospital with an AR-15 assault rifle
tucked under his white lab coat and opened fire in his old department, killing
one doctor and critically wounding six other people at the hospital, according
to law enforcement officials.
Bello
then shot himself, and staggered, bleeding, into a hallway where he collapsed
and died with the rifle at his side, officials said. A photo showed the doctor
on a blood-spattered floor as police stood over him.
Now,
detectives are trying to piece together what prompted Bello to snap two years
after he was forced out, and whether he was hunting for someone in particular
when he went to the 16th floor and started shooting.
"There
are many, many details that we're still putting together," Mayor Bill de
Blasio said, adding that terrorism was not involved in the attack. "This
was a horrible situation unfolding in a place that people associated with care
and comfort, a situation that came out of nowhere."
His
former co-workers described a man who was aggressive, loud, and threatening.
"All
the time he was a problem," said Dr. David Lazala, who trained Bello as a
family medicine doctor. When Bello was forced out in 2015, he sent Lazala an
email blaming him for the dismissal.
"We
fired him because he was kind of crazy," Dr. Maureen Kwankam told the
Daily News. "He promised to come back and kill us then."
The
Daily News reported Saturday that it had received an email purportedly from
Bello about two hours before the rampage.
"This
hospital terminated my road to a licensure to practice medicine," the
email said. "First, I was told it was because I always kept to myself.
Then it was because of an altercation with a nurse."
He
also blamed a doctor for blocking his chances at getting a chance to practice
medicine.
People
described a chaotic scene as gunfire erupted, spreading terror throughout the
medical facility as employees locked themselves inside rooms and patients
feared for their lives after hearing an announcement warning of someone in the
building with a weapon.
"I
thought I was going to die," said Renaldo Del Villar, a patient who was in
the third-floor emergency room getting treatment for a lower back injury.
Shortly
after receiving a 911 call about an active shooter, police officers went floor
by floor, their guns drawn, looking for the gunman. Fifteen minutes later they
confirmed he was dead in the building.
Bello
may have doused himself with an accelerant like gasoline and tried to set
himself on fire before shooting himself, officials said. Sprinklers
extinguished the fire.
The
officials were not authorized to discuss the still-unfolding investigation and
spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
According
to New York State Education Department records, Bello graduated from Ross
University and had a limited permit to practice as an international medical
graduate to gain experience in order to be licensed. The permit was issued on
July 1, 2014, and expired last year on the same day. Family medicine doctors handle
more routine cases, such as coughs and sprained ankles.
Bello
also worked as a pharmacy technician at Metropolitan hospital in Manhattan
because he was having a hard time getting licensed as a physician, but quit the
job in 2012 and filed for unemployment, according to the lawyer who represented
him on appeal in 2014. He lost his case. One former colleague at Metropolitan
said he would frequently argue with nurses and bristled at being told what to
do, but his attorney in the unemployment action said that's not the man he
knew.
"I'm
absolutely shocked," attorney David Wim said. "He was such a nice
gentleman. He was very humble, very polite, very respectful."
Wim
said he even jokingly suggested to his assistant that she date the doctor, who
was unmarried.
But
Bello had a history of aggressive behavior. In unrelated cases, the doctor
pleaded guilty to unlawful imprisonment, a misdemeanor, in 2004 after a 23-year-old
woman told police Bello grabbed her, lifted her up and carried her off, saying,
"You're coming with me." He was arrested again in 2009 on a charge of
unlawful surveillance, after two different women reported he was trying to look
up their skirts with a mirror. That case was eventually sealed.
It
was not immediately clear if the hospital was aware of his criminal history
when he was hired.
Two
surgeons at the hospital told the AP that all six victims were in critical
condition, but they were expected to survive. Medical staff at the hospital
immediately treated all the patients in its emergency department. The victims
largely suffered gunshot wounds to the head, chest and abdomen, they said. The
most seriously wounded was shot in the liver, said the surgeons, who spoke on
the condition of anonymity because they were not permitted to speak publicly.
Employees
and their loved ones scrambled for information in the horrifying moments
immediately after the shooting.
The
120-year-old hospital has one of the busiest emergency rooms in New York City.
It is about a mile and a half north of Yankee Stadium.
In 2011, two people were shot at Bronx Lebanon in what police said was a gang-related attack.
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