Five of six people wounded in a shooting rampage at a New York City hospital on Friday, June 30 are now listed in stable condition.
Bronx Lebanon Hospital vice president Errol C. Schneer said the improvement of the five others is a testament to how “heroically” staff responded to save lives when a physician forced to resign returned with an AM-15 assault rifle tucked under his white lab coat and opened fire in his old department, killing a female doctor.
Dr. Tracy Sin-Yee Tam, 32, was killed. She had been working at the hospital close to a year, and was very “well-liked by the hospital staff,” Schneer said.
Speaking further, Schneer said three patients who were listed as very critical have been changed to stable, adding that a fourth patient remains in stable condition, while a fifth in stable condition is being transferred to another hospital for specialized surgery.
“Many of our staff risked their own lives to save patients,” Schneer told reporters Saturday at the hospital where the 16th and 17th floors remained closed.
Meanwhile, The Daily News reported Saturday that it had received an email purportedly from Bello about two hours before the rampage.
“This hospital terminated my road to a licensure to practice medicine,” the email said. “First, I was told it was because I always kept to myself. Then it was because of an altercation with a nurse.”
Dr. Bello’s former co-workers described him as a man who was aggressive, loud and threatening. After he was forced to resign amid sexual harassment allegations.
His former co-workers said the 35-year-old Bello told colleagues he would be back to kill them over the decision to relief him of his job..
“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.”
