NYC Mass Shooter Targeted NFL HQ

A gunman who killed four people at a Manhattan office building before killing himself claimed in a note to have a brain disease linked to contact sports and was trying to target the National Football League’s headquarters but took the wrong elevator, officials said Tuesday.

Investigators believe Shane Tamura, of Las Vegas, was trying to get up to the NFL offices after shooting several people in the lobby on Monday but entered the wrong elevator bank, Mayor Eric Adams said in interviews.

Four people were killed, including an off-duty New York City police officer, Didarul Islam.

Tamura, who played high school football in California nearly two decades ago but never in the NFL, had a history of mental illness, police said. A three-page note found in his wallet suggested he had a grievance against the NFL over a claim that he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy. The degenerative brain disease has been linked to concussions and other repeated head trauma common in contact sports such as football, but it can only be diagnosed after someone has died.

In the note, Tamura repeatedly said he was sorry and asked that his brain be studied for CTE, according to the police department. The note also referenced former NFL player Terry Long, who was diagnosed with CTE, and the manner in which Long killed himself in 2005. The note accused the NFL of concealing the dangers to players’ brains for profit.

The building houses the NFL and other well-known businesses

Investigators found that Tamura drove across the country over the past few days and made his way into New York City just before the shooting, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said.

He then sprayed the lobby with gunfire, killing Islam, who was off-police duty and working a corporate security detail, and hitting a woman who tried to take cover, Tisch said.

He next made his way to the elevator bank, shooting a guard at a security desk and another man in the lobby, the commissioner said.

“He appeared to have first walked past the officer and then he turned to his right, and saw him and discharged several rounds,” Adams said in a TV interview.

Tamura took an elevator to the 33rd-floor offices of the company that owns the building, Rudin Management, and shot and killed one person on that floor. He then shot and killed himself, the commissioner said.

Blackstone confirmed that one of its employees, real estate executive Wesley LePatner, was among those killed. Security officer Aland Etienne also died, according to a local labor union.