The former Bronx Lebanon doctor who went on a shooting spree at the hospital last year stopped mid-bloodbath to stare one of his victims in the eye and tell him he’d been shot, according to a chilling account from the man in a new lawsuit
Justin Timperio — a first -year medical resident at the hospital — was shot by Dr. Henry Bello in the revenge-fueled rampage that killed one on June 30, and is now suing the hospital and the upstate gun store where the deranged doc legally acquired his weapon.
The lawsuit offers a disturbing first-hand account of the massacre, which began when Bello walked into the hospital wearing a white doctor’s coat with his old hospital ID badge and ended when he killed himself as cops closed in.
Timperio, a 29-year-old from Canada, recounts that he was writing patients’ medical charts on the 16th floor of the hospital that day when suddenly “the sh-t hit the fan.”
“Mass pandemonium” broke out with no guidance from the hospital, he claims — and then the doors swung open and Bello began blasting his rifle at the students.
Timperio looked down — and saw a red hole in his shirt.
“Oh my God, I have been shot,” he recalls saying.
Bello looked directly into his eyes and said, “That’s right,” according to the suit.
Timperio tried to flee — helping another female medical resident who was shot in the neck — but they faced a wall of flames where Bello had lit the nurses station on fire.
Bello then pointed his gun at them and said: “Come back here, I am going to find and get you, don’t try to leave.”
The pair nevertheless escaped, but Timperio says he was “lucky” to survive given the “life-threatening serious injuries and blood loss he sustained,” the court papers state.
He still has a “disfiguring midline abdominal wound,” suffers post-traumatic stress disorder and was unable to complete his residency, he says.
He contends that Bello’s “unauthorized entry” to the hospital that day was a result of Bronx Lebanon’s “ineffective security system ” and “negligent” human resources department.
The suit also claims that the Schenectady gun shop didn’t perform a thorough background check on Bello — and didn’t verify with police that he had a permit for the semi-automatic weapon.
An employee reached at the gun store, Upstate Guns and Ammo, declined to comment.
Errol Schneer, a spokesman for the hospital said, “as a general policy our hospital does not comment on any litigation.”