A mentally disturbed security guard from Las Vegas stormed into a Manhattan skyscraper Monday evening with an assault rifle, murdering a married NYPD officer and three other innocent people before taking his own life in a mass shooting attack targeting the NFL headquarters.
Shane Tamura, 27, reportedly carried a multi-page suicide note blaming the National Football League for giving him chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), even though he never played professional football. The crazed gunman reportedly wanted to shoot up the NFL offices but “mistakenly went up the wrong elevator banks” and ended up killing people on the wrong floor, Mayor Eric Adams confirmed Tuesday.
The rampage began around 6:30 p.m. during the evening rush when Tamura barged into the 44-story building at 345 Park Avenue armed with a Palmetto State Armory AR-15 assault rifle. The building houses both the NFL headquarters and Blackstone offices.
Off-duty Police Officer Didarul Islam, 36, was the first victim gunned down when Tamura unleashed his attack in the lobby. The hero cop, who had been on the force since December 2021, was working a paid security detail for building owner Rudin Properties when he was shot in the back and killed.
“Police Officer Didarul Islam represented the very best of our department. He was protecting New Yorkers from danger when his life was tragically cut short today,” the NYPD said in a statement.
Islam leaves behind a wife who is pregnant with their third child.
“It appears as though he was going after the employees of the NFL,” Adams said of the gunman. The mayor confirmed that Tamura’s note “alluded to having CTE from playing NFL” even though “he never played in the NFL.”
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch provided a chilling timeline of the massacre. After killing Officer Islam, Tamura “guns down a woman cowering behind a pillar in the lobby as he sprays more bullets and walks toward the elevator bank — where he shoots dead a security guard crouching at his desk.”
In a bizarre moment during the killing spree, the gunman allowed a woman to walk out of the elevators unharmed before heading up to the 33rd floor. There, he “begins to walk the floor, firing as he traveled” and killed one more person before “he then proceeds down a hallway and shoots himself in the chest.”
Tamura had traveled cross-country from Las Vegas, where he worked as a security guard at a casino. Police said he had a “documented mental health history” and didn’t show up for work Sunday morning, setting off alarm bells. His vehicle was last seen in Columbia, New Jersey, at 4:24 p.m. Monday, shortly before the attack.
The gunman’s suicide note revealed his obsession with CTE and football. Writing to the late Terry Long, the former Pittsburgh Steelers player who was diagnosed with CTE after killing himself 20 years ago, Tamura wrote: “Terry Long, football gave me CTE and it caused me to drink a gallon of antifreeze.”
“You can’t go against the NFL, they’ll squash you,” the note continued, according to law enforcement sources.
“Please study brain for CTE. I’m sorry. The league knowingly concealed the dangers to our brains to maximize profits. They failed us,” Tamura wrote in his manifesto.
Tamura never played professional football, though he was a high school player at Granada Hills Charter in California.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell sent a message to league employees confirming that one NFL worker was among the victims.
“As has been widely reported, a gunman committed an unspeakable act of violence in our building at 345 Park Avenue. One of our employees was seriously injured in this attack. He is currently in the hospital and in stable condition. NFL staff are at the hospital and we are supporting his family,” Goodell wrote.
“We believe that all of our employees are otherwise safe and accounted for, and the building has nearly been cleared.”
The NFL offices are located on floors five through eight of the Park Avenue building, but Tamura apparently got confused and went to the 33rd floor where Rudin Management is located instead.
Police recovered Tamura’s rifle and found his car contained a rifle case with rounds, a loaded revolver, extra ammunition, magazines, a backpack and medication prescribed to him. He had a concealed firearms permit from Las Vegas that expires in 2027.