The gunman who killed an NYPD officer and three other people in a Midtown office building on Monday evening was carrying a note that offered clues into his possible motive, sources told The Post.
Shane Tamura, 27, cited the NFL in the writings, which were found after he turned the gun on himself on the 33rd floor of 345 Park Ave. – a swanky skyscraper that houses the football league’s headquarters.
In the note, which was several pages long, Tamura blamed football for his apparent struggle with the neurodegenerative disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), law enforcement sources said.
Tamura, who fatally shot himself in the chest, also asked that his brain be studied in the note, according to the sources.
NYC Midtown shooting timeline
- Reports of the shooting at 345 Park Avenue started coming in at around 6:28 p.m.
- The shooter, Shane Tamura, 27, was seen on surveillance footage getting out of a double parked black BMW between 51st and 52nd Street, with an M4 rifle.
- He then walks towards the skyscraper, enters the lobby and turns right, where he shot police officer Didarul Islam, 36, dead.
- Tamura then gunned down a woman cowering behind a pillar in the lobby, as he sprayed more bullets and walked toward the elevator bank — where he shot dead a security guard crouching at his desk.
- One more man reported being shot and injured in the lobby. He was in critical but stable condition.
- The gunman allowed a woman to walk out of the elevators unharmed, before heading up to the 33rd floor, where building owner Rudin Properties’ offices are located, “and begins to walk the floor, firing as he traveled.”
- One man was shot and killed on that floor.
- “He then proceeds down a hallway and shoots himself in the chest,” ending his rampage.
- It’s unclear how long the mayhem lasted. Tisch posted on X at 7:52 p.m.: “the scene has been contained and the lone shooter has been neutralized.”
The NFL has offices on floors five through eight of the Park Avenue high-rise, though Tamura wound up taking the elevator up to the 33rd floor, where he turned the gun on himself after the massacre.
Tamura, who reportedly had a “documented mental health history,” had shot a fifth victim in the lobby of the building who survived the attack, police said.
The surviving victim appears to an NFL employee, as the league’s commissioner, Roger Goodell, told staffers in a letter that one of their own had been “seriously injured” in the shooting.
Tamura was a security guard at a Las Vegas casino, but back in his high school days in California he was a described as a standout football player.
“It looked like the sky was the limit, and then it wasn’t anymore,” former classmate Caleb Clarke told NBC News.
Tamura graduated from Golden Valley High in 2016. Ahead of his senior year, his coach told the Los Angeles Times that he expected “big things” from the running back and other star players on the team.
