Dr. Henry Bello, who resigned after facing termination for sexual harassment, was named as the lone gunman who opened fire on doctors and medical students at Bronx’s Lebanon Hospital after hiding a rifle under a white lab coat.
Just two hours before his deadly rampage at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital, shooter Henry Bello ranted to the Daily News in an email — blaming the medical center for ruining his dreams of furthering his career.
“This hospital terminated my road to a licensure to practice medicine,” Bello wrote to The News at 12:46 p.m. on Friday. “First, I was told it was because I always kept to myself. Then it was because of an altercation with a nurse.”
Bello, 45, said he was ultimately fired from his job for threatening a co-worker.
Bronx hospital shooter sent email to Daily News two hours before fatal rampage, blaming two doctors for his troubles https://t.co/BDzZxmzF3J pic.twitter.com/Qh05YKnOov
— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) July 1, 2017
In his email to The News, Bello blamed two doctors by name for getting the ax.
Bello said that after he was fired, he wrote an email to one female doctor “congratulating her for my termination after she sent out an email to everybody telling them to file complaints against me so I can be terminated for being rude to her.”
“I only said in the email, it remains to be seen if my life is meaningless or disposable,” Bello wrote.
He blamed another doctor for blocking his chances at getting a medical permit, saying he had poured $400,000 of his money into Bronx-Lebanon.
The ex-employee had worked in family medicine and threatened to kill co-workers before he returned to the hospital and opened fire with an AR- 15 rifle inside the hospital, sending patients, doctors, and nurses scrambling for cover and barricading doors. At least one person, believed to be a female doctor, has died, and six people were shot overall.
“Gun!” shouted a doctor who spotted the rifle under Bello’s white lab coat, according to The New York Post.
Bello’s former co-workers described a man who was aggressive, loud and threatening.
“All the time he was a problem,” said Dr David Lazala, who trained Bello as a family medicine doctor. When Bello was forced out in 2015, he sent Lazala an email blaming him for the dismissal.
“We fired him because he was kind of crazy,” Dr Maureen Kwankam told the Daily News. “He promised to come back and kill us then.”
Other news stories reported the name as Henry Bellow, but he’s listed as Dr. Henry Bello on the hospital’s website. NYPD wrote on Twitter that “an assault rifle was found nearby. The subject was wearing a white, medical type coat.”
Bello sent the email to the Daily News at 12:46 p.m. Friday. The shooting took place at 2:45 p.m. the same day. (OBTAINED BY NEW YORK DAILY NEWS)
The mass shooting unfolded at 173rd Street and Grand Concourse in the Mt. Eden section of the Bronx hospital, which is one of New York’s busiest. The carnage might have been even worse, but the injured fell inside a hospital equipped to treat them. “At least one doctor was being treated by people inside the hospital who had tied an emergency fire hose as a tourniquet,” according to The New York Times, which added that “police had described the gunman as a tall, thin man wearing a blue shirt and white lab coat. A police official said he had a long gun.”
“One doctor is dead and several doctors are fighting for their lives right now,” New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio said later.
Police said the 45-year-old Bello committed suicide in the hospital, after setting a fire in a nurse’s station with, according to The Daily Beast, a Gatorade bottle filled with gasoline.
Dr. Henry Bello, who resigned after facing termination for sexual harassment, was named as the lone gunman who opened fire on doctors and medical students at Bronx’s Lebanon Hospital after hiding a rifle under a white lab coat.
The ex-employee had worked in family medicine and threatened to kill co-workers before he returned to the hospital and opened fire with an AR- 15 rifle inside the hospital, sending patients, doctors, and nurses scrambling for cover and barricading doors. At least one person, believed to be a female doctor, has died, and six people were shot overall.
The Associated Press that he had trained Dr. Bello. Dr. Lazala described him as “very aggressive, talking loudly, threatening people,” and added that Dr. Bello had sent him a threatening email after leaving Bronx-Lebanon. Reached by phone on Saturday, Dr. Lazala declined to elaborate.
Surely, a career high point for Dr. Bello was his graduation in 2010 from the Ross University School of Medicine in Dominica, an island in the Caribbean — despite its reputation as a fallback for students who cannot earn admission to medical schools in the United States. But there were troubling signs for Dr. Bello before that.
Born Henry Williams Obotetukudo, Dr. Bello lived in California off and on from 1991 until 2006. It was unclear if he was born in the United States, but he obtained a Social Security card in his late teens. Records showed that, in 2000, he filed for bankruptcy in Santa Barbara, Calif., when he would have been in his late 20s. He obtained his license as a pharmacy technician in California in 2006, and it expired in 2009.
A serious brush with the law occurred in New York City in 2004, when he was arrested and charged with sex abuse and unlawful imprisonment. A 23-year-old woman told the police that he grabbed her on Bleecker Street in Manhattan, and tried to penetrate her through her underwear. Court records revealed that Dr. Bello pleaded guilty to unlawful imprisonment in the second degree, a misdemeanor, and was sentenced to community service.
The felony sexual abuse charge was dropped, which may explain why the episode was not unearthed during a criminal-background check conducted by Bronx-Lebanon. “There was no record of any conviction for sexual abuse,” said Errol C. Schneer, a hospital spokesman.
Dr. Bello was also arrested in New York in 2009, but that arrest record is sealed.
In recent weeks, despite receiving the Section 8 housing voucher during the spring, Dr. Bello was seen by several residents of the Lower East Side near the Bowery Mission on Avenue D. It was unclear what he was doing back in the vicinity of the program that three years earlier had offered assistance with housing and drug treatment.
“He looked preoccupied,” said Monsey Lapuelta, a neighbor of the Bowery Mission, when shown Dr. Bello’s photograph from news articles about the shooting. “He was very to himself, very quiet, looking down. I never saw him with other people.”
“Gun!” shouted a doctor who spotted the rifle under Bello’s white lab coat, according to The New York Post.
Other news stories reported the name as Henry Bellow, but he’s listed as Dr. Henry Bello on the hospital’s website. NYPD wrote on Twitter that “an assault rifle was found nearby. The subject was wearing a white, medical type coat.”
Police said the 45-year-old Bello committed suicide in the hospital, after setting a fire in a nurse’s station with, according to The Daily Beast, a Gatorade bottle filled with gasoline.
Here’s what you need to know:
- Family medicine doctor lost job at Bronx Lebanon hospital in 2015
- Bello Was Previously Arrested for Sexual Abuse After Being Accused of Grabbing a Woman & Trying to Carry Her Away
- There were major warning signs in Bello’s life before the mass shooting, which spanned two floors as Bello opened fire on hospital employees, including other doctors. He had a criminal history that mostly involved attacks against women.
- According to Pix11, Dr. Bello had three prior arrests, including one for sexual abuse. The New York Post reported that Bello was arrested in August 2004 in Manhattan “following an incident in which a 23-year-old woman said an assailant grabbed her crotch, held her arms, lifted her up and carried her off, saying, ‘You’re coming with me.’”
- Bello was “charged with sex abuse and unlawful imprisonment, sources said. Pix11 reported that Bello pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in the 2004 case and received community service.
- According to The Daily Beast, Bello also had “an arrest for attempted burglary at 5:10 a.m. on April 23, 2003, when he kicked in the door to an ex-girlfriend’s apartment on Buchanan Place in the Bronx.”
- Pix11 reported that Bello, in 2009, was “was charged with unlawful surveillance. At least two women complained he was trying to look up their skirts.”
- Bello was also arrested once for fare evasion on the New York subway system, according to The Daily Beast.
- Dr. Henry Bello, who resigned after facing termination for sexual harassment, was named as the lone gunman who opened fire on doctors and medical students at Bronx’s Lebanon Hospital after hiding a rifle under a white lab coat.
A graphic photo has emerged of Bello lying dead on the hospital floor. You can see it below, but be aware that it’s disturbing.
Tomorrow’s front page:
‘HE PROMISED TO COME BACK AND KILL US’
Fired hosp worker slays 1, wounds 6 https://t.co/HuHSHa4YlF pic.twitter.com/T3Y14jrgWD— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) July 1, 2017
New York records list his medical permit as “expired.”
NEW: records show Hospital shooter, Henry Bello’s medics license was suspended. @PIX11News pic.twitter.com/46HaEg5YKB
— Anthony DiLorenzo (@ADiLorenzoTV) June 30, 2017
The gunman also had personal troubles, although they were in the far past. In 2002, Bello was listed as a respondent in a California divorce that listed minor children.
According to The New York Daily News, police followed a trail of blood at the scene of the shooting, which is being investigated by police as a workplace violence incident, not terrorism.
The early reports came in for an active shooter at the hospital.
“Due to reports of a shooting incident at Bronx Lebanon Hospital, avoid the area of 1650 Grand Concourse,” NYPD tweeted as the shooting news broke. The ATF tweeted that it was responding to the scene to assist the NYPD. According to a tweet from NBC News, “Officials say the shooter in the Bronx, attempted to start a fire on the 16th floor of the hospital. Sprinklers knocked it down.”
The NYPD later revealed that Bello set himself on fire before committing suicide in the hallway.
One woman posted a photo on Instagram showing her barricaded in a room at the hospital, and others gave similar accounts of the panic inside the building. New York Police Commissioner James O’Neill said the shooting erupted on the 16th floor and the gunman was found deceased on the 17th floor.
According to NBC 4, the shooter was wearing doctor’s attire. He “was dressed in a white doctor’s type coat,” reported the television station. NYPD later confirmed this detail.
