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.
