Patients and staff are working to regain a sense of normalcy at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital a day after the shooting spree. NY1's Bree Driscoll goes in-depth with a woman who saw the shooting unfold on the 16th floor.
"Someone is shooting. There's a madman shooting on the floor. I don't know if I am going to make it out of here alive, but I want you to know I love you."
That was the text message 62-year-old Shirley Brown sent to her daughter from the 16th floor of Bronx-Lebanon Hospital on Friday as Dr. Henry Bello went on a shooting spree.
"I heard the pop and I saw the smoke and then a second pop," Brown recalled. "After we barricaded the door, we heard a couple more pops. We knew it was the real thing."
Brown was visiting her friend Darlene Thomas, who was being treated for blood clots, when she says she saw Bello and the AM-15 he used to carry out the attack.
"I came out of her room to get her some water, and I saw this man in a white coat," Brown described. "He had a gun. I thought it was a toy."
They huddled in a room as the sprinkler system went off. Police say Bello tried to light himself on fire before turning the gun on himself.
Emergency responders came to retrieve them from the room.
"When the water started coming in and everything was quiet now, I banged on the door and said, 'We are in here! We are in here!'" Brown said. "Some officers came and they asked if everyone was OK."
Brown and her friend left the hospital despite still needing treatment. They said they just didn't feel safe spending the night there. They returned Saturday, but not without fear.
"How could you sleep there? How could you feel safe there?" Brown reflected. "You come to a hospital to get better and you witness somebody shooting. You can't sleep like that."
The hospital is open and taking patients, but floors 15 through 17 of the building are shut down because of water damage from the sprinkler system going off, along with the police investigation.