Gunman asked ‘why’ before firing
NEW YORK — Police said Sunday that just before a former physician started shooting at a New York hospital, killing one person and injuring six others, he asked, “Why didn’t you help me out when I was getting in trouble?”
A police official said the preliminary investigation showed how the gunman, Dr. Henry Bello, had entered Bronx Lebanon Hospital on Friday and opened fire.
A surveillance camera captured Bello entering the hospital through a rear entrance in a white lab coat over a hooded sweatshirt, covering his head, said the police official, who was not authorized to discuss the case publicly. He carried a cardboard box that police believe was used to conceal a rifle.
A nurse on the 16th floor told police that Bello exchanged smiles with her before confronting a doctor. The nurse said Bello shouted at the doctor, “Come here.” The doctor refused.
The doctor told investigators Bello seemed agitated as he drew the gun and asked the doctor why he didn’t help.
The doctor, whom police did not identify, 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 other people.
Authorities said Bello then went to the 17th floor, killing Dr. Tracy Sin-Yee Tam, 32. Hospital officials said Tam normally worked in one of the hospital’s satellite clinics and was covering a shift in the main hospital as a favor to someone else.
“It makes you think that anything can happen to anybody,” said Tam’s neighbor, Alena Khaim, who on Friday night saw Tam’s sister outside the home and overcome with grief, shaking and unable to walk. “She was such a sweet girl. You would never think something like that would happen, but it happened.”
The hospital hired Bello in 2014 as a “house physician.” As a recent graduate from a medical school in the Caribbean, he only had a limited permit from New York state to practice medicine.
Before the shooting, Bello sent an email to the New York Daily News, blaming colleagues he said had forced him to resign in 2015.
Bello died from a self-inflicted gunshot.