Gunman kills four in mass shooting at New York City office building

New York City was the scene of something right out of an action movie on Monday evening. But it was pure reality, and the deployment of police in search of the suspect who shot and killed a police officer and three other people in a Manhattan office building was anything but fictional. The attacker, identified as 27-year-old Shane Devon Tamura, also wounded a fifth person before taking his own life.

The incident, which lasted just under two hours from the time the first shots were heard until the shooter’s lifeless body was discovered, provoked scenes of panic, with dozens of office workers running out of the building with their arms in the air, while a cordon of police cars flashed their lights. The area was closed off to traffic.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams appeared in public to report on the incident, along with the head of the city’s police department, the Manhattan district attorney, and a large number of law enforcement and Department of Homeland Security officials. The press conference took place at the hospital where the injured were taken.

Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said a black BMW pulled up and a man with an M4 rifle got out and walked toward the building, located at 345 Park Avenue, which houses corporate offices for the National Football League (NFL) and financial companies. The shooter immediately opened fire inside the lobby before heading toward the elevator. He went up to the 33rd floor and walked to the office of Rudin Management, the real estate firm that owns the building, where he shot another man before turning the gun on himself.

The gunman had “a documented mental health history,” said Tisch. “His motives are still under investigation and we are working to understand why he targeted this particular location.” The shooter left a suicide note in which he claimed he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), linked to head trauma, and expressed anger at the NFL. In his youth, he was a semi-professional football player.

The victims were the off-duty police officer Didarul Islam, 36, a married father of two with a third child on the way; another man and two women. “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 about the police officer. “He died as he lived. A hero.”

According to Tisch, Islam was one of two officers working as security guards at the building, thanks to a type of contract that allows companies to hire city police officers to reinforce security at their facilities.

This is the 254th mass shooting in the United States this year, according to data from the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive. The standard definition of a mass shooting is one in which at least four people, excluding the shooter, are killed or injured.

The incident occurred in an enormous building that occupies an entire block in Midtown and has its own zip code, according to CNN. Besides housing the headquarters of the NFL, it is also home to several major financial firms, including the financial advisory firm KPMG as well as Blackstone, the world’s largest hedge fund. The Irish consulate also has its offices in the skyscraper.

The suspect, identified as Shane Devon Tamura, a resident of Las Vegas, had a license to carry a concealed handgun, a weapons permit similar to the restrictive New York State laws that were revoked by a Supreme Court ruling in 2022. According to sources consulted by CNN, the 27-year-old man also had an expired private investigator license.

Tamura had no significant criminal record, according to CNN. The alleged gunman, who is believed to have acted alone, was born in Hawaii but later moved to Nevada, where the license plates on the car that police found outside the building were from.

Images circulating on social media, which have since been confirmed, show the man wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying a semi-automatic rifle entering 345 Park Avenue, a 44-story skyscraper near the city’s tourist hub, Central Park, around 6 p.m. The New York Post confirmed the suspect’s description, citing anonymous police sources.

The shooting took place in Midtown Manhattan, the site of another high-profile attack late last year by a young gunman named Luigi Mangione.