The gunman who killed four people in a Manhattan office building, including a NYC police officer, on Monday was trying to get to the NFL headquarters, Mayor Eric Adams said Tuesday. Las Vegas resident Shane Tamura shot three people in the lobby but took the wrong elevator, which did not take him to his intended target.
Police said Tamura, a former high school football player, had a history of mental illness and left a note behind asking for his brain to be studied for CTE, a neurodegenerative disease linked to repeated head trauma that has been connected to many football players. CTE can only be definitively diagnosed after death.
“He seemed to have blamed the NFL,” the mayor said. “The NFL headquarters was located in the building, and he mistakenly went up the wrong elevator bank.”
The note, according to excerpts released by police, said the NFL had concealed the danger of football to keep making money.
Tamura died of a self-inflicted gunshot to the chest.
The building was home to the headquarters of the NFL and Blackstone, and the latter company confirmed that employee Wesley LePatner was one of those killed by the gunman.
“Words cannot express the devastation we feel,” the firm said in a statement. “Wesley was a beloved member of the Blackstone family and will be sorely missed. She was brilliant, passionate, warm, generous and deeply respected within our firm and beyond.”
Tamura also shot and killed New York City police officer Didarul Islam.
