Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Shooting- When A Doctor Goes Crazy

On June 30, 2017, at approximately 2:45 PM EDT, a doctor opened fire with an AR-15-type semi-automatic rifle at the Bronx-Lebanon Medical Center in the Bronx, New York City, United States, killing a doctor and injuring six others.

The Inside Story

The shooter was later identified as Dr. Henry Michael Bello, a 45-year-old Nigerian-born family physician who used to work at the hospital.

Dr. David Lazala, a current faculty member and graduate of the family medicine residency program, told the Associated Press that he was one of the physicians training Bello, who sent Lazala a threatening email after being sacked.

He had the day off on Friday and was allegedly the target of the attack. Dr. Maureen Kwankam stated that she sacked Bello after only two years on the job. Kwankam went on to say "We fired him because he was kind of crazy. He promised to come back and kill us then."

Bello sent an e-mail to the New York Daily News hours before the shooting. In it, he made a number of accusations about why he was fired, including: "First, I was told it was because I always kept to myself. Then it was because of an altercation with a nurse. Then I was told, it was because I threatened a colleague."

Bello charged a certain doctor with delaying his professional advancement and costing him $400,000.

The Day Of The Shooting

Dr. Tracy Tam was fatally shot on the seventeenth floor of the hospital.

Dr. Tracy Sin-Yee Tam, a family care physician, was not Bello's planned target, since she was off on Friday and covering a friend's shift, according to a report from the New York Post.

Tam graduated from Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine in 2013 and was licensed to practice medicine in the state of New York in December 2015.

Bello intended to murder the doctor whose sexual harassment allegations had cost him his job. Tam, who generally worked in the clinic, was asked to fill in for an absent physician. This modification proved fatal for her.

Six people were hurt, including three doctors, two medical students, and a patient. Doctor shot in the knee and brain, who had several hours of on-site surgery, was the most severely injured. Two further physicians were shot in the neck and abdomen, a student was hit in the hand, and the patient sustained an undisclosed minor injury.

Bello committed suicide, according to the New York City Police Department, by shooting himself.

One of the victims of the shooting at Bronx Lebanon Hospital was Dr. Tariq Hassan. He provided terrifying details of his encounter with a gunman during a bedside interview.

The 32-year-old gastroenterologist says that Henry Bello burst into an office on the 16th floor and started shooting while he and other doctors and residents were talking. Dr. Hassan tried to go down the stairs to the emergency room after pretending to be dead and hiding in a bathroom. Instead, he lost so much blood that he fell over on the 12th floor. He was picked up by coworkers, who took him straight to an operating room on the third floor.

The Shooter

Bello was a Nigerian native from Auchi, Edo State.

He entered the hospital, his former employment, in a white lab coat concealing an AR-15 machine rifle and inquired for a doctor on the sixteenth floor.

When he was informed that the doctor was not present, he allegedly began shooting at everyone and tried to set himself on fire before committing himself.

In Bello's residence in the Bronx, investigators found the box in which the firearm was packed when he purchased it on June 20.