KILLED FOR KINDNESS
Slain doctor was filling in for colleague ‘Angel treated all patients as VIPs’
The doctor murdered by a deranged former physician was remembered Saturday as the polar opposite of the madman who took her life — a selfless caregiver who treated “all patients as VIPs.”
Dr. Tracy Sin-Yee Tam, 32, was covering a shift for a colleague Friday when she encountered Henry Bello on the 17th floor of Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center. He opened fire, fatally shooting her in the neck, and then committed suicide with a shot to the chest as police closed in.
“She was the closest human being to an angel I have ever met,” said a friend.
Tam graduated Touro College medical school in 2013 and received her medical license that same year, records show.
Like Bello, she was a familymedicine doctor but usually worked in the hospital’s satellite clinic, rarely taking shifts at the main facility, friends and co-workers said.
It was not clear if Bello even knew Tam, who had worked at Bronx-Lebanon for only about a year and who was supposed to be off duty when Bello burst in. She had agreed to pick up the extra shift Friday, hospital officials said.
“She was very well-liked by hospital staff, and we are certainly grieved throughout the hospital,” said Bronx-Lebanon spokesman Errol Schneer, who said Tam worked at the Mount Hope hospital for a year. “It’s a very tragic event for us as well.”
Tam’s tight-knit family, including her father, a cabdriver; and mom, a homemaker who recently started working again, returned to their family’s Hillcrest, Queens, home on Friday to find detectives waiting for them, a neighbor said.
“The mother came home first. As soon as she went inside, I heard screaming. I know it was her,” Mahmudur Rahman, 58, recalled on Saturday. “The dad came around 8, 8:30 p.m. I heard him scream out, too. I know they are hurting right now.”
Tam and her younger sister grew up with Rahman’s kids.
“They shovel the snow together, they clean the cars, go shopping. They are the model family,” he said. Neighbors were stunned. “It’s a crazy-person world out there,” said Pat Vicencio, 55, who lives down the street. “I cried when I heard. Why it had to be her? Why?
“She was a very nice girl — shy and friendly. She always said hello when she passed by,” Vicencio said.
Neighbor Alena Khaim, 23, saw the family leaving with detectives.
“They looked distraught . . . It was the saddest thing ever. I knew something horrible had happened. It’s really sad. It makes you think anything can happen to anybody. She was such a sweet girl.”
Shirley Brown, 62-year-old Bronx nursing-home worker, was visiting her friend with a knee injury at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital on Friday when Dr. Henry Bello began his deadly shooting rampage right outside their 16th-floor room. She told The Post’s Kevin Fasick of those harrowing moments.
Iwas visiting my friend Darlene in Room 1618 when I spotted a doctor with a gun under his arm. I thought it was just a toy. He was standing outside a room catty-corner from my friend’s room, getting ready to go inside.
A few seconds later, he went in and I heard a pop. I saw smoke and smelled it, too.
I couldn’t believe it was real. I was stuck there, in the doorway, in disbelief. My only thought was, “God, I really don’t want to go right now.”
The nurses and everyone started running. A nurse rushed inside my friend’s room and hid inside the closet. I ran back in, too, slammed the door and grabbed my friend.
We crouched down on the floor under the bed to hide.
I realized he could still come inside and push that door open, so I started barricading the door with the bed, two chairs and the portable nurses station.
The nurse never came out to help us.
My thinking was if we block the door, he’s not going to fight to get inside. Then we stayed away from the window — and from the front of the door.
Liquid started coming in from under the door. It smelled like gasoline, and the panic started all over again.
Suddenly, the ceiling caved and all this water started coming down. I had no idea what was going on and just thought, “Oh, my God.”
I later learned that he tried to set himself on fire with the gas, and that the water came from the fire sprinklers that went off in the 17th-floor nurses station.
I sent a text to my daughter saying there was a mad gunman in the hospital and that if I didn’t make it through, I wanted her to know I love her.
Then, it got quiet. The water kept coming, and we just stayed there. I don’t know how much time went by because everything was so surreal.
I banged on the door and screamed, “Hey, we’re in here! We’re in here!”
The police came and told us, “It’s all clear.” They escorted all three of us out, into the elevator and down to the emergency ward.
It didn’t feel real until we were out of the hospital. We thanked God for protecting us and bringing us out there safely.
I’m grateful I’m still here to talk about it.
We thought we were goners. We really thought we were goners.