The gunman who killed four people and then himself at a Manhattan office building on Monday was targeting NFL offices, NYC Mayor Eric Adams said.
Adams, speaking Tuesday, said authorities “have reason to believe that he was focused on the NFL,” which has offices in the building where the shooting occurred. The gunman, Shane Tamura, left a note claiming to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a brain disease linked to contact sports like football.
According to FOX 11 LA, Tamura was a running back in high school at Granada Hills Charter High School in Los Angeles.
Adams told CNN that the city’s medical examiner would make the call on whether to test the gunman for CTE, which can only be diagnosed after death by examining brain tissue.
In his note, Tamura criticized the NFL and referenced Terry Long, a former NFL player who was diagnosed with CTE and died by suicide in 2005.
In the note, Tamura repeatedly apologized and asked for his body to be studied for CTE. He shot himself in the chest instead of the head.
“Study my brain please,” the note reads. “I’m sorry.”
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Adams said investigators believe the gunman entered one of the building’s elevator banks without access to the NFL’s offices. Tamura instead ended up at Rudin Management on the 33rd floor, where his body was later found.
One of the victims was Didarul Islam, an off-duty New York Police Department officer. Adams ordered all flags at city buildings to fly at half-staff in honor of him.
The two other people killed were Wesley LePatner, a senior executive at the investment firm Blackstone, and Aland Etienne, a security guard at the building. At the family’s request, the fourth victim’s name is not being released. A fifth person, an employee at the NFL, was injured.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said the incident bolsters the case for stricter gun laws.
“New York has some of the strongest gun laws in the nation,” Hochul said in a statement. “But our laws only go so far when an AR-15 can be obtained in a state with weak gun laws and brought into New York to commit mass murder.”
