RSS 2.0 FeedMarch 10, 2011, Cover Stories, Bellmore Life
EXCLUSIVE: Wounded Bellmore EMT Justin Angell speaks
Brother's bravery helped save Mr. Angell
ALIVE! Justin Angell, right, Bellmore Fire Department EMT who was wounded by a gunman who was later shot dead, stands tall next to his father Gene and brother Dean, who helped save Justin by shielding him further from the gunman. It’s the same pose they made in 2002, when dad Gene was named Bellmore’s Father of the Year. They were all happy to be able to strike this pose again. Bellmore Life photo by Douglas Finlay
No one knows precisely why a heavily armed gunman was in Bellmore around 9:57 p.m. after an apparent dispute with his wife in Commack last Tuesday, March 1, when his Ford F-150 pickup truck rammed into a telephone pole on Bellmore Avenue, near Claxton Avenue, bringing the pole completely down.
But his deadly intentions became clear very quickly once Bellmore volunteer emergency medical technicians responded to calls of a crash, Nassau Detective Lieutenant Kevin Smith told Bellmore Life. Driver Jason Beller fired his SKS-7 assault rifle from a short distance into the hip of EMT Justin Angell of North Bellmore – who had gotten out of his ambulance moments earlier to talk with a woman who had witnessed the accident – and would later train his green laser sights from the weapon on Seventh Precinct police officers when they responded to the scene.
EMT tells all
At his home in North Bellmore, recovering from a gunshot wound that entered his left hip, went through cleanly and out his back without hitting vital organs, 20-year-old Justin Angell told his story to Bellmore Life.
He said he was at the Bellmore Fire Department headquarters on Pettit Avenue last Tuesday night when the lights flickered momentarily. “It was about 20 seconds or so later that a call came in that a car had hit a pole,” Mr. Angell said.
He, his 23-year-old brother Dean Angell, an MTA Bridge and Tunnel policeman, and another EMT set out in an ambulance, with Dean driving. “We thought the accident might have something to do with the lights flickering,” Justin recalled.
“We got to where we were told the accident was, Bellmore Avenue and Merrick Road, but noticed it was actually down about a block,” said Dean.
In the total darkness of the blackout caused by the truck hitting and bringing down the pole, they saw the truck resting near the yellow line, facing north, near Claxton Avenue. “We pulled up not too far from the truck,” alongside the curb facing south, said Dean. They could see the truck in the reflections of flashing emergency lights.
"I got out of the truck to talk with a woman who was talking as though she had seen the accident,” said Justin. Facing south as he talked with her, he then heard a loud bang and “felt a sharp pain that also kicked me back, like a jolt to my body.”
He quickly, instinctively began moving north away from the large bang, shielded behind the ambulance, thinking that a transformer had blown and he was being pummeled by shards of the transformer that were penetrating his body. But in the dizzying atmosphere, he also noticed a green laser light searching over the house nearest him.
After the bang, “I was looking up at the pole, looking for the transformer, which I thought had just blown from the large bang,” Dean told Bellmore Life, not knowing his brother had just been shot. Upon taking his eyes from the pole, a green laser light caught his eye and he saw a flash from the truck and another bang, and realized a shot had been fired.
Justin continued moving north, away from the scene when another EMT pulled up in his car several yards behind the ambulance. Justin ran to the car, saying he had been hit by something, possibly the transformer. The EMT got out of his car and walked Justin over to the lawn at the corner of Marion Street and Bellmore Avenue. He told Justin to get on his hands and knees to relieve the growing pain in his back.
“I ducked down, put the ambulance in reverse and backed up several houses,” said Dean, trying to escape being shot. He also radioed while backing up that “There’s someone shooting at us.”
As he backed up, Bellmore Fire Chief Robert Taylor arrived on the scene, stopping closer to the truck, not realizing the man inside was taking shots at them.
“When I saw the chief I put the ambulance in forward and drov toward the scene,” Dean continued. He then positioned the ambulance between the Ford truck, now several yards away, and where the chief and the EMT were working on Dean’s brother on the lawn, to shield them from the shooter.
“I then saw through the passenger side window that my brother was down from a shot and they were attending to him,” Dean recalled.
In what can only be described as an act of pure brotherly love, Dean then got out of the ambulance directly into the line of sight of the shooter, and ran around to attend to his brother. “I never thought anything of it, I just did it,” he said of his brave action.
Out of the shooter’s line of sight, he, the chief and the third volunteer on the scene picked Justin up and carried him over to the side door of the ambulance and placed him inside.
Once more, instinctively, Dean overcame the danger of putting himself in the line of sight of the shooter by walking around the ambulance to enter the driver’s side. From there he raced down Marion Street on the way to the Nassau University Medical Center.
Dean said the whole time seemed to take no more than a few minutes before he was on his way to save his brother – just as police arrived.
Police arrive, approach truck
“He’s got a gun,” shouted onlookers as the first Seventh Precinct police officer, a K-9 officer, arrived and tried to approach the disabled vehicle sitting in the middle of the road after rebounding from the impact, Detective Lieutenant Smith continued. The officer then saw a laser beam on his body and immediately scrambled out of harm’s way as another shot rang out.
While the officer ducked out of the way as more shots rang out – approximately eight total shots were fired, Det. Lt. Smith said – another Seventh Precinct patrol car pulled up, and another officer got out of the car into the potential hail of gunfire.
During those tense moments, as the other police car pulled up, the K-9 officer who first scrambled out of the line of sight of the laser, crouched down as he went around to the passenger side of the vehicle and fired his weapon into it, “putting out the threat,” the detective said.
Karen Goebler Libby told Bellmore Life, “We live across the canal from Bellmore Avenue. The lights blinked [from the accident], then shortly afterwards we heard the shots, lots of people yelling.”
Packing heat
The threat came from Mr. Beller carrying six weapons at the time of the shootings, Det. Lt. Smith said. Mr. Beller had a “pistol in his pocket, one between his legs, another laying next to him, a level-action rifle strapped around his body and another two weapons directly behind him he could access very quickly,” the detective said.
He was a “domestic terrorist,” whose plans for the evening were interrupted when he crashed into the pole, the detective said.
Police were still investigating where Mr. Beller got the guns. He had lived in Florida and had moved back to Long Island recently, after growing up on Long Island, Det. Lt. Smith said.
Prescription pills and open bottles of beer were found in the truck, but it will not be known whether Mr. Beller was under any influence until toxicological tests come back from the medical examiner’s office, the detective said.
At the hospital
In the ambulance on the way to the hospital Justin began feeling the weight of the injury, and concerning himself with getting the wound treated. He wiggled his legs and toes to make sure he had feeling in them. Once at the hospital, emergency trauma specialists stabilized him, cutting the blood-soaked shirt off him and taking X-rays to see the extent of his injuries.
X-rays revealed no internal organs had been hit, but two bullet fragments remained lodged inside. No surgery was required.
For now, Justin walks gingerly, takes medications to keep infections away and looks forward to returning to work as an EMT.
“I have no strong feeling one way or the other about the shooter,” he said, though he admitted to an anger that crept over him early, after first being shot.
“But I am glad he was stopped. He can't hurt anyone else now."
