Bronx-Lebanon Hospital is slowly getting back to normal a week after a former employee went on a shooting rampage, killing one doctor and wounding six others before turning the gun on himself, police said.

The Friday before the Fourth of July weekend went “from a normal to a horrifying day” inside the hospital, said Mayor Bill de Blasio at a press conference two hours after the shooting rampage. De Blasio quickly ruled out terrorism, adding it was an act of workplace violence.

“This was a horrific situation unfolding in the middle of a place that people associate with care and comfort – a situation that came out of nowhere,” de Blasio, flanked by NYPD and government officials outside the medical center, said.

Shooting

Police identified the gunman as Dr. Henry Bello, 45, who had worked at the Claremont hospital until 2015 when he was forced to quite amid sexual assault claims. Dr. Bello had already been in trouble with police in 2004 when he was charged with sexual harassment and unlawful imprisonment of a 23-year-old woman. A report by The New York Times said Dr. Bello had a history of financial troubles, addiction and had been currently staying at a homeless shelter in Manhattan. He was last employed at the city’s Human Resources Administration. Despite his checkered past, Dr. Bello’s background checks at Bronx-Lebanon and HRA were cleared since he pled to lower level infractions.

On June 30, Dr. Bello returned to the Bronx hospital sneaking in an AM-15 rifle under a white lab coat he was wearing, according to NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill. He then went up to the 16th floor and opened fire, killing a female doctor identified as Dr. Tracy Tam, 32, an attending physician who was covering for a colleague that day. He shot six others, seriously wounding five, while shooting a sixth victim in the leg. The five seriously wounded were fighting for their lives as of press time. Bello made his way to the 17th floor, setting himself on fire, and triggering the fire alarm system. Bello then committed suicide. Bello purchased the firearm at Upstate Guns and Ammo, a weapons store in Schenectady, New York ten days before the shooting.

It’s unclear whether the victims were the intended targets.

Employees Take Cover

A massive police response went underway moments after the shooting, with staffers and patients rushed out of the 17-story hospital that rests along the busy Grand Concourse. Officers from various precincts were called in to assist, along with the Norwood’s 52nd Precinct cordoning off the scene, which happened within the 44th Precinct.

Patient care technician Nana Cisee was on her lunch break when she heard the gunshots. She was missing her left shoe by the time she evacuated the hospital.

Technician Janet Jones was on the 15th floor when another employee alerted her about the shooter.

“At the same time there was an announced ‘Code Red: Fire,’” Jones said. “But the one who came down said, ‘No! Gunshot!’ And said she literally heard the gunshot, and when she heard it she came to our unit, that’s how we were aware of what was going on.”

A physical therapist, who declined to give her name, said she heard loud shots on her floor as she prepared notes.

“We didn’t know what happened,” she said, visibly shaken. “The police came, and yelled ‘police,’ and escorted us outside.”

Lewis Jefferson, an employee at the hospital, said he heard the shots and saw blood on the staircase of the hospital’s top floor.

Meantime, Dr. David Wong, an orthopedist for the hospital, said the hospital had never seen an incident like that before.

It’s unclear what type of security standards are set at Bronx Lebanon Hospital, a nonprofit hospital that sees 1.1 million and 140,000 emergency room patients walk through those doors yearly.

“After the investigation, we need to see how this can be prevented in the future,” Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., who stood next to de Blasio at the news conference, said.

He described the shooting as something “straight out of a movie.”

Additional reporting by Reggie Francois and Devin Dae Tucker. 

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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.