Canadian among NYC hospital wounded
Doctor was shot ‘ between six and nine times’
S T. CATHARINES, ON T. • A Canadian doctor was among the wounded in Friday’s deadly shooting inside the Bronx-Lebanon Hospital in New York City in which a physician opened fire on his former colleagues.
Justin Timperio, 29, of St. Catharines, Ont., was shot “between six and nine times,” resulting in damage to his liver and other internal organs, his father says.
Luciano Timperio said his son’s condition had stabilized enough that he could receive an operation on Monday.
Justin Timperio is a graduate of Brock University in St. Catharines and of the American University of the Caribbean. His father said he started working at BronxLebanon about three years ago, for the clinical component of his medical training. He was then accepted to the hospital’s family residency medical program, where he has worked for the past year.
Chilling details have emerged about how the gunman had stormed into his one-time workplace and shot seven people, one fatally, before taking his own life.
A surveillance camera captured Dr. Henry Bello entering the hospital through a rear entrance in a white lab coat with a hooded sweatshirt underneath it, covering his head, said the police official, who was not authorized to discuss the case publicly. He carried a cardboard box large enough to conceal a rifle.
Bello headed to the 16th and 17 th floors. A nurse on the 16th floor told the police he exchanged smiles with her before confronting a doctor. The nurse said Bello shouted at the doctor to “Come here.”
When the doctor refused, Bello pulled out his rifle and started firing, the police official said. That doctor told investigators Bello seemed agitated as he drew the gun and said to him, “Why didn’t you help me out when I was getting in trouble?”
That doctor recalled pulling out his cellphone to call 911, and Bello ordering him to put the phone down. Then he started firing, missing the doctor but wounding several others. The police official said the doctor who was fatally shot on the 17 th floor, Tracy Sin-Yee Tam, 32, had been hit in the wrist by a bullet, but it had ricocheted off the bone and travelled up her arm and into her armpit.
Another police official said she may have also been shot in the abdomen. The medical examiner’s office has not yet made public the cause of death; an autopsy was performed but the findings are still being reviewed.
Of the six people wounded in the shooting, two remained in critical but stable condition. They had injuries to the brain and liver. Four were in stable condition.
Bello, 45, had resigned after an accusation of workplace sexual harassment and other disruptions in 2015.
He accused one doctor in particular of encouraging colleagues to complain about him, which he believed led to his departure, the police official said. According to officials, that doctor worked on the 16th and 17 th floors but was not in the hospital on the day of the shooting.
That doctor told investigators Bello was a “belligerent person,” according to the police official. He said Bello had accused him of trying to get him fired, and sent him an email “congratulating” him on his supposed efforts. Bello sent a letter to The Daily News hours before his rampage, repeating those claims.
The hospital, however, told the police that Bello had resigned when he learned he was going to be fired.
The nurse who had seen Bello arrive told investigators she hid behind a workstation as shots were fired. When she raised her head, the police official said, she saw Bello pouring liquid on the floor from a plastic container he appeared to have taken from his coat.
As he ignited it, the hospital’s sprinklers began pouring water. Witness accounts indicated Bello may also have set himself on fire.