The lone fatality in Friday’s mass shooting at Bronx Lebanon Hospital was a 32-year-old doctor from Jamaica who was a dedicated and caring physician, according to co-workers and friends.
Dr. Tracy Sin-Yee Tam was the only victim killed in the June 30 shooting, and staff called her death a “monumental loss for us all,” according to The New York Times. Tam, who lived in the Hillcrest section of Jamaica, usually worked on the ground-level family medicine clinic but was filling in for a doctor on the 17th floor.
On June 30, at about 2:55 p.m. Dr. Henry Bello entered the 16th floor of the hospital at 173rd Street and Grand Concourse and shot six people before shooting himself. According to police, Bello also tried setting himself on fire on the 17th floor. When police entered the hospital, the hospital’s fire alarm went off and they found the shooter on the floor in a white medical coat. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Tam was found dead by police; she had been shot with an AM-15 that Bello purchased from upstate New York a few weeks earlier.
She had a reputation for being a caring physician who wanted to work with the most vulnerable populations, according to The New York Times article. Dr. Iyad Baker, Tam’s program director during her residency, said he would get calls from patients complimenting Tam.
“She was never above tucking her patients in at night,” Dr. Baker told The Times. “She would come in even when her shift is over. She’d ask the human thing, just what a good person would do: Can I get you a glass of water? Would you like me to get you a magazine? Things that are not very common to do in the field.”
Tam lived in a two-story house with her parents, who immigrated to the U.S. from China, and her sister. She graduated from Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine in 2013 and worked at a hospital in New Jersey before coming to the Bronx.
Dr. Naghma Burney, who was a mentor to Tam, said she spent one month last year shadowing her even though she had the month off.
“What an end to a beautiful life,” Dr. Burney told The Times. “She could have helped so many people out. She could have added so much to the community.”
Bello, 45, was a former employee at Bronx Lebanon Hospital. He left in 2015 after he was accused of sexual harassment by a coworker. Bello, who lived in California for 15 years, struggled with homelessness and lived in transitional housing on the Lower East Side in 2014. Bowery Mission Men’s Center specifically helped formerly homeless men with drug addictions.
A GoFundMe page has been set up by a doctor to help Tam’s family pay for funeral expenses.
