Bellmore firefighters discuss shooting

With a 6-inch bandage covering a gunshot wound on his lower back, Bellmore volunteer firefighter Justin Angell gave a chilling account of a shooting that could have ended his life at 20.

Angell was treated as a hero when he left the hospital after two days, flanked by his brother and other firefighters. He is uncomfortable in the spotlight.

"I'm not a big attention craver," he said softly, his eyes downcast in an exclusive interview with Newsday Thursday night. "Me? I'm just glad I'm OK."

What was supposed to be a routine call to aid an accident victim on the evening of March 1 turned into a wild confrontation. Nassau County police said a disturbed man with five guns, bent on mayhem, opened fire on his would-be rescuers. The gunman, Jason Beller, 31, of Commack, was shot dead by a Nassau County officer.

Minutes earlier, Angell was in the Bellmore Fire Department's recreation room in a solo game of PlayStation's NHL 2011 when the lights flickered.

He was annoyed; he was winning and the power outage restarted the game.

"Watch," he said just then to his brother Dean, 23, sitting at his side. "We might get a car accident right now."

Angell was right.

The department got a call 45 seconds later that a driver had crashed into a utility pole.

The brothers rushed into an ambulance -- both are EMTs -- and drove to the scene with Dean behind the wheel.

As they pulled up to the pitch-dark street, they noticed a woman standing at the side of the road.

Justin jumped out of the ambulance and asked her what was happening. Before she could answer, he heard a loud boom. It turned out to be gunfire.

"I thought the transformer exploded and a piece of shrapnel hit me," he said.

Justin took off running and stopped at Marion Street and Bellmore Avenue, placing his hand on the trunk of a parked car so that he could catch his balance.

He still didn't know he'd been shot.

The car belonged to another firefighter, who got out and saw Justin's shirt soaked in blood and told him to get down.

"I got on all fours," Justin said. He was in shock. "I couldn't even get up."

Dean heard the bang and he, too, thought it was a transformer.

Then he looked up and saw a green beam of light floating through the air and followed it to its source. The driver whom they were there to help was wielding a gun with a laser scope.

"I was like, 'What was that?' " Dean said. "It took me a second and I thought, 'Is this really happening? There's a guy that hit a pole and he's shooting at us?' "

Dean got into the ambulance, put it in reverse, shrunk below the steering wheel and told a third EMT -- who rode to the scene with them -- to get down.

He got on the radio: "They are shooting at us," he told the dispatcher.

"From what I saw, it looked like he was shooting everywhere," Dean said.

He reversed the ambulance and drove 10 houses from the scene.

"I just wanted to get out of there," Dean said.

When he popped his head back up, Dean saw fire Chief Robert Taylor's truck pass him on the street, headed toward a victim on all fours.

That's when he discovered it was Justin.

Dean arrived at his brother's side, asking if he was all right. Justin said he was, but that he couldn't get up.

The chief called in on the radio that there was a gunshot victim. It was then that Justin realized the call was about him.

"My main concern was that I just wanted to get to the hospital," Justin said. "I just kept moving my feet to make sure I was still able to move."

"It was all crazy," he said. "They brought me to the hospital and put me on a stretcher."

Justin had delivered many other victims to the emergency room during his short career, but had never been there himself as a patient.

As he recovers at home, people keep asking Justin if he wants to return to his volunteer work at the fire department. He does.

"This is a freak thing," he said. "This is not something that happens every day. I'm not going to go on calls now worried about being shot."

He said the entire situation has made him a more empathetic first responder.

"Now I know what it feels to be on the other side," he said.