Doctor had vowed to kill staff
Medic returns to hospital two years after being fired and kills one and injures six.
Dr Henry Bello proved a man of his word. After he was forced to resign as a family medicine doctor amid sexual harassment allegations, he threatened his colleagues. He said he would kill them.
Bello returned to Bronx Lebanon Hospital yesterday with an AR-15 assault rifle tucked under his white lab coat and opened fire in his old department, killing a woman 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.
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.
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.”
People yesterday described a chaotic scene as gunfire erupted, spreading terror throughout the hospital 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.
Shortly after receiving a 911 call police 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 and tried to set himself on fire before shooting himself, officials said. Sprinklers extinguished the fire.
Bello had a history of aggressive behaviour. In unrelated cases, the doctor pleaded guilty to unlawful imprisonment, a misdemeanour, 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 in 2009 on a charge of unlawful surveillance, after two women reported he was trying to look up their skirts with a mirror. That case was later sealed.