Lethal & legal
Gun store OK in selling assault rifle to doc
AN UPSTATE gun store was following the law when it sold deranged doctor Henry Bello the assault rife he used to kill a clinician last week at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital.
Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms spokesman Matthew Myerson told the Daily News on Tuesday that Upstate Guns and Ammo in Schenectady “was legally authorized” to sell the AM-15 to Bello just eight days before his rampage that also left six wounded.
The ATF is still investigating whether Bello, 45, was legally allowed to possess the gun.
“We’re still looking at background,” Myerson said.
The transaction appeared to have been legal despite New York’s SAFE Act, which Gov. Cuomo touted as the toughest gun control law in the nation. The 2013 law banned an array of accessories for assault-style rifles, as well as certain models of firearms. his
A spokesman for the state police said late Tuesday they cannot yet assess whether the firearm is compliant with the SAFE Act because it’s in NYPD custody.
The owner of the business previously told The News he followed the law.
Meanwhile, a GoFundMe account for the family of Dr. Tracy SinYee Tam, who was killed by Bello during the Friday attack, had reached $33,823 of a $50,000 goal.
Tam, 32, was covering a shift for a colleague when Bello attacked.
Bello worked at Bronx-Lebanon for six months beginning in August 2014. He was forced to resign after being accused of sexually harassing a colleague.
The demented doctor had been homeless and had several encounters with police dating back to 2004 — but none resulted in a felony conviction that would have prevented him from buying a firearm.
The arrests also did not result in red flags on background checks for his job at Bronx-Lebanon, or subsequent gig for the city’s Human Resources Administration.
The gunman also wounded five doctors and one patient before killing himself as cops closed in.
One of those doctors, Oluwafunmike Ojewoye, was discharged Monday after recovering from a bullet to the neck.
Bronx-Lebanon spokesman Errol Schneer said two other doctors and a patient were in stable condition and improving.
Two other doctors were being treated at Mount Sinai Hospital.
“They’re improving as well,” Schneer said.
The lone patient wounded in the shooting, Wildanio Guareno, 26, provided a harrowing account of the rampage to The News.
He recalled a desperate sprint for his life out of the hospital room where he’d been receiving treatment for abdominal pain and colitis.
“I remember gunshots, smoke on the 16th floor. As soon as I saw smoke, I just tried to run out of the room,” he said in a bedside interview at the hospital.
“I thought, ‘Oh, this is serious.’ I just tried to get out of there as quickly as possible.”
As he followed a wounded doctor fleeing the killer, Guareno was shot in the back of his left knee. He kept running before falling down a stairwell.
“You just fight for your life at that point, I guess,” Guareno said.