New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Tuesday that a gunman who killed four people at a Manhattan office building was trying to target the headquarters of the NFL but took the wrong elevator.
Investigators believe Shane Tamura was trying to get to the NFL offices after shooting several people in the building’s lobby but accidentally entered the wrong set of elevator banks, Adams said in interviews Tuesday.
Four people, including an off-duty New York City police officer, were killed. Police said Tamura had a history of mental illness, and a rambling note found on his body suggested he had a grievance against the NFL over an unsubstantiated claim that he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy. He had played football in high school in California nearly two decades ago.
“He seemed to have blamed the NFL,” Adams said. “The NFL headquarters was located in the building, and he mistakenly went up the wrong elevator bank.”
The note claimed he had been suffering from CTE — the degenerative brain disease that has been linked to concussions and other repeated head trauma common in contact sports like football — and said his brain should be studied after he died, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.
It also specifically referenced the NFL, the person told the AP.
The shooting took place at a skyscraper that is home to the headquarters of both the NFL and Blackstone, one of the world’s largest investment firms, as well as other tenants.
A message sent to Blackstone employees, and obtained by the AP, said a staff member at the private equity firm was killed in Monday’s shooting, but their identity was not immediately released.
An employee of the NFL was seriously injured in the shooting and was hospitalized in stable condition as of early Tuesday morning, league commissioner Roger Goodell said in a memo to employees.
“One of our employees was seriously injured in this attack. He is currently in the hospital and in stable condition,” Goodell wrote in the memo, which was obtained by ESPN. “NFL staff are at the hospital and we are supporting his family. We believe that all of our employees are otherwise safe and accounted for, and the building has nearly been cleared.”
Goodell added in the memo that there would be “increased security presence” at the league’s offices “in the days and weeks to come.” He said employees based in New York should work remotely Tuesday or could take the day off.
“Every one of you is a valued member of the NFL family,” Goodell wrote. “We will get through this together.”
Surveillance video showed Tamura exiting a double-parked BMW just before 6:30 p.m. carrying an M4 rifle, then marching across a public plaza into the building. Then he started firing, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said, killing a police officer working a corporate security detail and then hitting a woman who tried to take cover as he sprayed the lobby with gunfire.
The man then made his way to the elevator bank and shot a guard at a security desk and shot another man in the lobby, the commissioner said.
“Our officer, he was slain in the entryway to the right as soon as he entered the building, the suspect entered the building,” Adams said in a TV interview. “He appeared to have first walked past the officer and then he turned to his right, and saw him and discharged several rounds.”
NFL employees were told to shelter in place at the time, according to ESPN’s Jeff Darlington. The NFL offices are on floors five through eight of the 44-story building.
The man took the elevator to the 33rd floor offices of the company that owned the building, Rudin Management, and shot and killed one person on that floor. The man then shot himself, the commissioner said. The building, 345 Park Avenue, also holds offices of the financial services firm KPMG.
The officer killed was Didarul Islam, 36, an immigrant from Bangladesh who had served as a police officer in New York City for 3 1/2 years, Tisch said at a news conference.
“He was doing the job that we asked him to do. He put himself in harm’s way. He made the ultimate sacrifice,” Tisch said. “He died as he lived. A hero.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
