Shane Tamura, who carried out a fatal shooting attack at a Manhattan office tower housing the National Football League, showed evidence of early-stage degenerative brain disease tied to repeated blows to the head, according to New York City’s chief medical examiner.
The shooter had left a note at the crime scene accusing the NFL of abandoning players with head injuries and asked that his brain be examined for chronic traumatic encephalopathy. A postmortem examination found evidence of low-stage CTE in Tamura’s brain.
“The science around this condition continues to evolve, and the physical and mental manifestations of CTE remain under study,” the office said.
On July 28, Tamura carried out one of the deadliest mass shootings in New York in recent years. The attack began in the lobby of 345 Park Avenue, where he fatally shot Didarul Islam, a three-year veteran of the Police Department who had emigrated from Bangladesh. Investigators believe his intended target was the NFL’s office on the fifth floor, but he entered the wrong elevator bank and was carried instead to the 33rd floor.
Once there, he killed Aland Etienne, a security guard, and Wesley LePatner, a senior managing director at Blackstone, before turning his gun on Julia Hyman, an employee of Rudin Management, which owns the tower. He then killed himself. An NFL employee was wounded in the gunfire and survived.
Blackstone executives described the day as the darkest in the company’s history, and its offices at 345 Park Avenue remained closed for a week.
Tamura’s notes and the medical examiner’s findings cast the rampage against the backdrop of football’s long-running struggle with brain injuries. CTE was first identified in boxers nearly a century ago and has since been diagnosed in hundreds of former football players. The disease is caused by the abnormal buildup of tau proteins that slowly kill neurons. Researchers say even repeated sub-concussive blows — hits that never register as diagnosed concussions — can trigger the condition over time.
The disease, however, can only be confirmed after death, which limits what researchers know about its prevalence and progression. Symptoms can include memory loss, impaired judgment, depression and sudden mood swings.
A 2017 study of 111 former NFL players’ donated brains found CTE in 110 of them. The league has since paid out more than $800 million under a settlement with retired players and their families. In 2016, it announced a $100 million initiative to fund concussion research and promote player safety. Teams now limit full-contact practices and require padded “guardian caps” during training camp. Still, families of former players have continued to come forward with stories of suicide and cognitive decline linked to brain injury.
Tamura once played football in high school before a head injury ended his career, according to his online posts. He later worked as a casino security guard in Las Vegas and held a concealed-carry permit in Nevada. In his final writings, he said the NFL had failed to protect players from CTE and portrayed himself as one of the sport’s casualties.
