HOSPITAL SHOOTING
Terrorism ruled out as a motive for the shooting
NEW YORK — A disgruntled doctor armed with an assault rifle and wearing a lab coat went on a rampage in the Bronx hospital where he had worked Friday, killing a female doctor and wounding six other people — five of them seriously — before setting himself on fire and shooting himself in the head, authorities said.
The attack by the doctor — identified by one police official as Henry Bello — sent workers at the hospital, Bronx-Lebanon, diving behind desks and doors. Witnesses described medical workers ripping a fire hose from the wall to use as a makeshift tourniquet on one victim’s leg, while others recalled the gunman, his torso aflame, running downa hallway.
Terrorism was quickly ruled out.
Some believed the death toll would have been far higher had the shooting occurred anywhere but a hospital.
“The situation unfolded in the middle of a place that people associate with care and comfort,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said during a news conference. The gunman acted alone, he said, adding that it appeared to be a workplace dispute that ended in a suicide — “but not before having done horrible damage,” the mayor said.
Police did not identify the person who was killed, other than to say she was a doctor and a woman. The five seriously injured patients are “fighting for their lives,” the police commissioner said. The sixth had a gunshot wound to the leg.
Dr. Bello was going to be fired by the hospital, but instead chose to resign, after he was accused of sexual harassment, a police official said. Another police official said Dr. Bello had left the hospital some time ago. “He didn’t leave voluntarily, he didn’t leave to take another job or go back,” the official said.
Dr. Bello was armed with an AR-15 rifle that investigators believed he sneaked in the hospital by concealing it under his lab coat, the two police officials said.
While investigators were still trying to determine a motive, one official said, “Most likely it’s a workplace violence on the part of a former disgruntled employee.”