How Shane Tamura went from high school football star to the NYC shooting mass murderer

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7 hours ago

How Shane Tamura went from high school football star to the NYC shooting mass murderer
NEW YORK — More than a decade before he turned a Midtown NYC office building into a killing ground, Shane Tamura stood out as a rising star on a high school gridiron.
Police believe the 27-year-old shooter's obsession with CTE, a brain disease football players often suffer from repetitive blows to the head, sent him on a deadly path to New York City's NFL headquarters on Park Avenue.
But it's unclear if the once-promising varsity running back ever suffered from CTE or its effects, and there's no record that he played football, college or professional, in the years leading up to Monday's massacre.
Here's what we know about Tamura's life, how he got the assault rifle that he used to kill an NYPD officer and three others, and the timeline of the shooting, which ended with Tamura firing a fatal bullet into his own chest and leaving a note reading, 'study my brain.'
A standout player
Tamura's skill on the field in high school earned him high praise from his coach at Golden Valley High School in Santa Clarita, California, who described him in October 2014 as one of the most talented players he'd seen in his 20-year career.
'He's a game-breaker. You definitely want the ball in his hands,' Dan Kelley, Tamura's coach, told The Signal, a Santa Clarita newspaper.
'He's even harder on himself when he doesn't take it all the way. I always have to remind him that not every play is going to go for a touchdown. … The sky is the limit with Shane. If he dedicates himself to the weight room and becomes the best football player in this valley, I think he has that capability.'
Tamura himself had some words to share about his burgeoning football career: 'It's great being a big part of everything and scoring a lot of touchdowns, but I have to keep getting better.'
He would soon transfer to Granada Hills, and in a short video interview published by the Los Angeles Daily News on YouTube on Sept 19. 2015, he appeared shy as his interviewer heaped praise on him as a 'standout running back' whose huge fourth-quarter touchdown sealed the team's 35-31 come-from-behind victory.
'We were down 10-0. We definitely had to stay disciplined — our coach kept saying, 'Don't hold your heads down, don't hold your heads down.' Just had to stay disciplined and come together as a team,' Tamura said.
'We just had to keep playing, keep fighting through it and just hold our heads up high and then a good result is gonna come.'
But it's unclear if his sports career ever progressed past high school, and he never played in the NFL.
His family moved to Las Vegas, and they kept to themselves, neighbors on their block told the Daily News.
State records show he got a security guard license in California and a private investigator license in Nevada in 2019, but let both expire.
Most recently, he worked at the Horseshoe Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.
'You never would have thought violence was something you'd associate with him,' Caleb Clarke, one of Tamura's former classmates, told NBC News. 'Everything he said was a joke.'
Another friend, Julian Torres, who said he played football with Tamura from the second grade through high school in Santa Clarita, told the New York Times, 'This is not something I would expect of him. … He was a good kid. It's kind of crazy to see. He was smart, athletic, came from a good family.'
Torres told the Times that a group of Tamura's high school friends had a chance encounter with him in Vegas a few weeks ago.
'He seemed cool, he seemed normal, like the same person they remembered,' Torres said.
Mental illness, weapons
But Tamura's life took a sharp turn several years ago as there were signs he was struggling psychologically while also acquiring weapons.
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Tamura had a 'documented mental health history,' with indications he had been placed under two mental health holds in Nevada, in 2022 and 2024.
In 2022, a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police officer saw Tamura on the street behaving like he might be a threat to himself, and cops took him to a hospital where he was put on a psychiatric hold, CNN reported.
He was also busted for trespassing in Las Vegas in September 2023, public records show.
Tamura refused to show his ID when he tried to collect $5,000 he won at the Red Rock Casino Resort & Spa, according to ABC News, which cites a Las Vegas police report.
Staff there asked him to leave, but he wouldn't go without his money, and a cop arrested Tamura after he grabbed a casino security officer, according to the report. Prosecutors declined to pursue the charge.
None of that likely would have prevented him from legally buying a gun, according to a report in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Gun sellers in Nevada have been required to perform background checks on buyers since 2020, and a person with a felony conviction or a long-term involuntary mental heath commitment would be barred from purchase.
An emergency mental health crisis hold isn't enough to stop someone from buying a gun, though, according to experts who spoke to the Review-Journal.
On June 14, 2022, Tamura got a concealed firearms permit from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.
Then, on June 12, seven weeks before the shooting, he legally purchased a Colt Python .357 caliber revolver, which the NYPD found in his vehicle. Cops found the empty box for the gun in his Nevada apartment.
At some point, he bought the murder weapon from his supervisor at the Horseshoe Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, according to police.
The supervisor, named Rick, legally purchased the weapon, an AR M-4 assault-style rifle with a scope and a barrel flashlight attached. He, in turn, sold it to Tamura for $1,400, police said.
Rick also sold Tamura the BMW he used to drive cross-country to New York, cops said.
'Tell Rick I'm sorry,' Tamura wrote in a suicide note found in his wallet.
Rick, who cops say has been cooperating and confessed to selling the rifle, hasn't been charged with a crime. Nevada doesn't prohibit the purchase of assault rifles, and gun sellers aren't required to be licensed with the state.
'I'm not allowed to talk to you,' Rick told a Daily News reporter before hanging up Tuesday.
When police searched Tamura's apartment after the shooting, they found a tripod for the rifle and three prescription medication bottles: one for an anti-inflammatory, one for epilepsy medication and one for an antipsychotic.
They also found a second suicide note that read: 'When I look into you and dad's eyes all I see is disappointment. I love you, Momma. I'm sorry.'
A deadly rampage
Tamura double-parked his BMW on Park Avenue and walked into the building at about 6:30 p.m. July 28, sparking more than 40 calls to 911 as he walked across an open plaza into 345 Park Ave., near 51st Street, the rifle in his hand.
In the lobby, he encountered Officer Didarul Islam, who was in his NYPD uniform working a paid security detail, and shot him dead.
As as he made his way to the elevator banks, he shot and killed security guard Aland Etienne, 46. Etienne, already wounded, dove behind a security desk, then crawled to an elevator control panel in a desperate, futile bid to push the button that would shut the elevators down.
Tamura killed Blackstone executive Wesley LePatner, 43, and badly wounded an NFL executive leaving work, who called his office to warn them a shooter was on the loose.
The killer then walked into an elevator, apparently looking for the NFL, which has space on four of the building's lower floors. But he picked the wrong elevator bank and ended up on the 33rd floor, where the offices of Rudin Management are located.
Two sources who viewed surveillance footage said Tamura looked 'pissed and angry' he was on the wrong floor, and started firing through glass doors before kicking in the door to the Rudin offices.
Sebije Nelovic, a cleaning worker on the floor, narrowly avoided death — she made a left turn down a corridor just as Tamura, heading down the same hallway, turned the opposite direction, police said.
Rudin employee Julia Hyman, 27, was in a bathroom. When she stepped out, Tamura fatally shot her, cop sources said.
Moments later, Tamura shot himself to death.