Nigerian opens fire at New York hospital, kills self

There was pandemonium at Bronx hospital, New York when a
former employee, Henry Bello, opened fire, killing one and injuring six others.

A gunman has opened fire with an assault rifle inside a
hospital in the Bronx borough of New York, killing one doctor and injuring six
other people, five of them seriously.

The gunman, a former doctor at the hospital, killed himself
in the attack, BBC said.

The shooting began at about 14:55 local time (18:55 GMT) at
the 1,000-bed Bronx-Lebanon Hospital.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said the shooting was not an act of
terrorism, but rather workplace-related.

He said the attack had been a “horrific situation in
the middle of a place that people associate with care and comfort”.

Several of the injured are “fighting for their
lives,” he said, adding that the doctor killed in the attack was a woman.

Police said the suspect was wearing a white medical coat
when found. An assault rifle was also discovered nearby, which a local
politician separately said appeared to be a military-grade M16 rifle.

Police Commissioner James O’Neill said the attack began on
the 16th floor and all the victims were shot on the 16th and 17th floors.

The gunman has not been officially named but police sources
told US media he was Henry Bello, 45, a former family-medicine doctor at the
hospital. Sources quoted by NBC said he had resigned in 2015 in lieu of
termination.

Mr O’Neill said the gunman had tried to set himself on fire
and died of a self-inflicted wound.

Messages on social media spoke of doctors and nurses
barricading themselves inside the building in the Mount Hope district.

One patient in the radiology department, Felix Puno,
tweeted: “Building is in complete shut down, I was in the middle of
getting an X-ray when security alerted us to the active shooter
situation.”

Garry Trimble, whose fiancée works at the hospital, said
security was not good enough.

He said: “I can walk through the back door with an
employee. If the employee opens the door, I can walk in. I think every hospital
should have one police officer at each entrance. They only ever do something
when something happens.”

Bronx-Lebanon is a private, not-for-profit hospital that has
been operating for 120 years.

Shootings at hospitals are not common, but there have been
several such instances in recent years.

In 2015, a man entered a Boston hospital and asked for a
cardiologist by name, shooting him dead when he arrived. During the
investigation, it emerged that the man’s mother had previously been a patient
at the hospital.

In July 2016, another man opened fire in a patient’s room at
a Florida medical centre, killing an elderly woman and a hospital worker. The
suspect was later deemed to suffer from mental health issues, casting doubt
over his competency to stand trial.

In July last year, a patient at a Berlin hospital shot a
doctor before turning the gun on himself. The city had also seen a shooting
outside another hospital earlier in the year, in which no-one was killed.