New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Tuesday that the 27-year-old gunman who killed four people and injured another in a shooting at 345 Park Avenue on Monday was trying to target the NFL’s headquarters, which are located in that building, but inadvertently took the wrong elevator.
“He did have a note on him. The note alluded to that he felt he had CTE, a known brain injury for those who participate in contact sports. He appeared to have blamed the NFL for his injury,” Adams said on CBS Mornings. “He, from our preliminary investigation, he took the wrong elevator bank up to the NFL headquarters. Instead, it took him to Rudin Management, and that is where he carried out additional shootings and took the lives of additional employees.”
One of the victims injured in the attack was an NFL employee, who was “seriously injured” but is in stable condition, according to a memo sent by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell on Monday evening:
NYPD commissioner Jessica Tisch identified the shooter as Shane Devon Tamura of Las Vegas, per the Associated Press.
Tisch stated that Tamura drove to New York City from Las Vegas, having passed through Colorado on Saturday, Nebraska and Iowa on Sunday and then arriving in New York on Monday. He double-parked a BMW outside the Park Avenue building just before 6:30 p.m. and, carrying an M4 rifle, started firing in the lobby.
According to Tisch, Tamura killed a police officer working security in the building and hit a woman who had tried to take cover. As he made his way to the elevator bank, he shot a security guard and another man in the lobby. He then took the elevator to the 33rd floor and shot and killed one person in the Rudin Management offices before shooting himself. (The NFL’s offices are located on floors 5-8 of the same building.)
The note he carried with him claimed that he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease linked with repeated head trauma, and that he wanted his brain to be studied after he did. CTE cannot be definitively diagnosed until after death, so it is not yet known whether he did suffer from the disease.
CTE has been found in the brains of former football players, and has been the subject of litigation between the NFL and former players. (Tamura was not a former NFL player but did play football in high school, according to classmates.) The note claimed that the NFL had concealed the danger of playing football in favor of chasing profits, per the New York Times.
Tisch identified the slain officer as Didarul Islam, 36, an immigrant from Bangladesh who had been with the NYPD for 3.5 years. Islam was a father of two and his wife is pregnant with their third child.
“He was doing the job that we asked him to do. He put himself in harm’s way. He made the ultimate sacrifice,” Tisch said. “He died as he lived. A hero.”
This post will be updated with more information.
