Just before he fatally shot four people and himself in the midtown Manhattan office building that houses the headquarters of the NFL, Shane Tamura is said to have wanted one thing: that his brain be studied for medical science.
In Tamura’s back pocket was a suicide note. It explained that the 27-year-old Las Vegas resident, who had been a promising football player, was suffering from what he claimed was chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a brain disease that particularly affects those who play contact sports.
Tamura had a long and well-documented history of mental ill health and his motive for the shooting has not been officially identified.
The gunman was seen entering the Manhattan building with a rifle
The note indicated that Tamura, who played high school football in Los Angeles, had grievances with the NFL’s handling of the condition. “Terry Long football gave me CTE,” the gunman wrote. “You can’t go against the NFL, they’ll squash you.”
Long, who played for the Pittsburgh Steelers, died by suicide in 2005 and was subsequently diagnosed with CTE. In 2023, researchers at Boston University studied 376 former NFL players and found that 345 of them had the disease. The league has acknowledged a link between playing the sport and contracting CTE, and has introduced rule changes to limit the risk of damage.
Growing up in California, Tamura was named in local newspapers as an outstanding athlete. He played running back for a high school in Santa Clarita, and later for Granada Hills High School, where he was regularly mentioned in game reports.
In September 2015 he was interviewed after helping the team come back from behind against a close rival with a 59-yard touchdown in the final minutes. “We definitely had to stay disciplined, our coach kept saying: ‘Don’t hold your heads down,’” he said. “I caught the pass and weaved my way down and then broke free.”
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Walter Roby, his coach at Granada Hills, described him as “one of my top offensive players at the time.” He told Fox 11: “Shane was very quiet … a hard worker. Whatever we asked him to do, he was doing it.”
Former teammates expressed disbelief at his actions. “He was very quiet, but when he did actually talk, people listened,” Anthony Michael Leon told NBC News. “This was one of those kids who never exerted bad energy.”
Leon recalled that Tamura excelled but did not remember hearing him talk about wanting to play in the NFL, like so many of their teammates.
Caleb Clarke, another high school teammate, told NBC News he was “special” as an athlete and “was the biggest goofball in the world, just a ton of energy, class clown … You never would have thought violence was something you’d associate with him. You know, he could make a joke about people, but that’s just typical. Shane was a jokester. Everything he said was a joke.”
Before the shooting Tamura had been working at the Horseshoe Las Vegas casino as a “surveillance department employee”, according to a spokesman for the company. He held a permit to carry a concealed firearm.
Police said he set off from Las Vegas to New York in his BMW last weekend. He pulled up to 345 Park Avenue, where the NFL has offices, at about 6.30pm on Monday.
After opening fire in the lobby, Tamura travelled to the 33rd floor. It is thought he did this in error and intended to target the NFL offices on floors five to eight.
An NFL employee was “seriously injured” in the shooting and is in hospital, according to a memo to staff from Roger Goodell, its commissioner.
Four other people were killed before Tamura turned the gun on himself.
Police said he was carrying a three-page note asking that his brain be studied for signs of CTE.