US shooter’s note blamed NFL for brain injury: Mayor
Source: Fox News
A gunman who stormed a New York City high-rise, killing four people, took a lift to the wrong office from the one he was targeting.
A note on Shane Tamura’s body revealed what appeared to be his manifesto to attack the offices of the National Football League.
New York mayor Eric Adams said the 27-year-old suspect blamed the NFL for his degenerative brain disease.
“The note alluded to that he felt he had CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy), a known brain injury for those who participate in contact sports,” Adams told CBS News.
“He appeared to have blamed the NFL for his injury.”
Tamura ended the massacre on Monday night (local time) by shooting himself in the chest on the 33rd floor of the Park Avenue office tower in Manhattan.
The NFL has its headquarters in the skyscraper, alongside major financial companies.
But Tamura apparently entered the wrong lift bank and ended up in the offices of Rudin Management, a real estate company, where he shot employees, the mayor said.
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The shooting suspect, Shane Tamura, played football in his younger days. Picture: AAP
Tamura was a Las Vegas resident with a history of mental illness.
He was never an NFL player but online records show he played football at his California high school and was a varsity player at a Los Angeles charter school until graduating in 2016, according to school sports databases.
The note found in his wallet said his football career was cut short by his brain injury, Bloomberg News reported.
A former coach, Walter Roby, told Fox News that Tamura was a “quiet, hard worker” during the year he spent on the team at Granada Hills Charter School.
“He was, you know, one of my top offensive players at the time,” Roby said.
CTE is a serious brain disease with no known treatment that can be caused by repeated knocks to the head while playing contact sports.
It has been linked to aggression and dementia.
One of the gunman’s victims was Wesley LePatner, a senior executive with private equity firm Blackstone and a married mother of two.
Several of her colleagues at Blackstone, which had its offices in the tower, were injured and taken to hospital.
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Many of the offices near the site of shooting, including Blackstone’s, were closed on Tuesday morning (local time).
Wesley LePatner, a senior executive at Blackstone, was killed. Picture: AAP
Those who returned to the area, home of some of the country’s financial powerhouses, were shaken by the proximity of the violence.
“We are very saddened about the tragic loss of life … thankfully, everyone at [our] firm is safe,” said Mitchell S Nussbaum, co-chair of law firm Loeb & Loeb, which has offices on the building’s 18th to 22nd floors.
Tamura also killed a New York Police Department officer, Didarul Islam, 36. Adams said Islam came from Bangladesh and had been on the force three years.
US President Donald Trump said his “heart is with the families of the four people who were killed, including the NYPD Officer, who made the ultimate sacrifice”.
An NFL employee was also injured in the shooting and was in stable condition at a hospital, according to a memo sent by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to league staff.
Goodell wrote there would be “increased security presence” at the league’s offices “in the days and weeks to come”.
A police officer stands by a makeshift memorial. Picture: AAP
Tamura appeared to have driven to New York City from Las Vegas over three days and to have acted alone, New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said on Monday night.
He entered the skyscraper’s lobby, turned to his right and immediately shot Islam, who was working on the building’s security detail, Tisch said.
He then shot a woman and two men in the lobby but inexplicably allowed another woman to pass him unharmed before he took the elevator to the 33rd-floor offices of Rudin Management.
There he fatally shot his final victim before taking his own life, Tisch said.
A widely circulated photo showed the permit issued to Tamura by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department allowing him to legally carry a concealed firearm.
He had recently worked as a security guard at a Las Vegas casino, Fox 11 news channel in Los Angeles reported.
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