A doctor forced from a New York hospital job because of sexual harassment accusations, shot seven people at the hospital where he used to work, killing one woman and leaving several doctors fighting for their lives.
The gunman, Henry Bello, killed himself after trying to set himself on fire atBronx Lebanon Hospital, officials said.
Witnesses described a chaotic scene as gunfire erupted, spreading terror throughout the medical facility as employees locked themselves inside rooms and patients feared for their lives.
"I thought I was going to die," said Renaldo Del Villar, a patient who was in the third-floor emergency room getting treatment for a lower back injury.
Law enforcement officials identified the shooter as the 45-year-old Bello, who is described on the hospital website as a family medicine physician.
Bello was allowed to resign from the hospital in 2015 amid sexual harassment allegations, according to two law enforcement officials. The officials didn't know the details of the allegations.
The officials were not authorised to discuss the still-unfolding investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
In unrelated cases, the doctor pleaded guilty to unlawful imprisonment, a misdemeanour, in 2004 after a 23-year-old woman told police Bello grabbed her, lifted her up and carried her off, saying, "You're coming with me." He was arrested again in 2009 on a charge of unlawful surveillance, after two different women reported he was trying to look up their skirts with a mirror.
On Friday, one female doctor was killed and six other people were wounded, five of them seriously, according to Police Commissioner James O'Neill. The patients were treated in the emergency room at Bronx Lebanon.
A surgeon at the hospital told the AP that all six victims were in critical condition, but they were expected to survive. The victims largely suffered gunshot wounds to the head, chest and abdomen, he said. The most seriously wounded was shot in the liver, said the surgeon, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not permitted to speak publicly.
"This was a horrible situation unfolding in a place that people associated with care and comfort, a situation that came out of nowhere," Mayor Bill de Blasio said, adding that terrorism was not involved in the attack.
The 120-year-old hospital has nearly 1,000 beds and one of the busiest emergency rooms in New York City. It is about a mile and a half north of Yankee Stadium.
In 2011, two people were shot at Bronx Lebanon in what police said was a gang- related attack.
