Workers at Blackstone building barricade office door during Shane Tamura's deadly New York shooting
Workers in business attire were seen stacking dozens of gray couches up against their office door inside 345 Park Avenue — which also houses the NFL headquarters — until the furniture barricade reached the ceiling, according to the photos obtained by ABC7.
Panicked workers even began pulling apart wood desks to add more furniture to the barrier, the pics provided by a Blackstone employee showed.
A police officer and at least four other people were shot and killed — and several others injured — by Tamura, who stormed into the swanky skyscraper where the NFL also has its headquarters.
The 27-year-old maniac barged into the 44-story building armed with a Palmetto State Armory AR-15 and opened fire at around 6:30 p.m. during the evening rush, law enforcement sources told The Post.
Tamura then turned the gun on himself, cops said.
The 1,900,000 square foot skyscraper occupies an entire city block bounded by Park Avenue, Lexington Avenue, 51st Street and 52nd Street, according to its management company.
Originally published as Workers at Blackstone building barricade office door during Shane Tamura's deadly New York shooting
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
News.com.au
3 days ago
- News.com.au
NY shooting victim Julia Hyman made it into panic room before she stepped out and was immediately gunned down
Midtown mass shooting victim Julia Hyman had made it into a fortified panic room at 345 Park Avenue when gunman Shane Tamura started blasting apart her office, but stepped out for a moment and was 'immediately' gunned down, according to a tragic new timeline of the deadly rampage. Ms Hyman, a 27-year-old employee of Rudin Management, dashed into a panic room hidden in a 33rd-floor bathroom on Monday evening as Tamura stepped out of the elevator and began firing off an assault rifle, officials familiar with the investigation told the New York Post. The panic room was fitted with a ballistic door, locking bolts, a hardwired phone, and even a live camera feed looking out on the hall, officials said. Tamura, 27, had fired through a glass wall after stepping off the elevator and kicked through the broken glass to get inside the Rudin offices and then began spraying bullets through glass office doors and walls. He fired at a female cleaner who was pushing a garbage cart through the hall, but missed as she ran away. There was a brief pause in the gunfire and then — for reasons unclear — Ms Hyman stepped out of the bathroom panic room, and was instantly shot by Tamura, officials said. Wounded, the Cornell grad crawled to a desk, reached out for a phone, and collapsed. Moments later, Tamura pointed the gun at his own chest and pulled the trigger, killing himself. The heartbreaking details come from a timeline pieced together using witness statements and security footage from inside the building, which housed offices of the NFL headquarters that Tamura is believed to have been targeting. The shooting play-by-play also revealed that Tamura grew 'visibly angry' when he saw the Rudin Management logo after stepping off the elevator onto the wrong floor. Despite realising he was not on the NFL HQ floor and Hyman was not one of his intended targets, he still killed the young employee who had worked at Rudin for less than a year. Tamura's rampage began when he stormed the building's lobby at 6.27pm after pulling his assault rifle from his BMW, which he'd double-parked outside the Midtown tower. Once inside, he immediately started shooting up the lobby, and gunned down NYPD officer Didarul Islam, 36, as he sat behind the front desk in full uniform, police said. By then, security guard Aland Etienne, 46, started running for the building's elevator lockdown panel, but Tamura shot him too. Mr Etienne still desperately tried to reach the lockdown panel and crawled bloodied across the lobby floor, but collapsed before he could make it. Tamura next shot NFL employee Craig Clementi, who was wounded but survived. Blackstone executive Wesley Le Patner, 43, was fatally gunned down next as she sprinted for cover that she never reached. The gunman then boarded an elevator — allowing a woman to exit unscathed — and rode it to the 33rd floor, where he killed Ms Hyman. The 27-year-old was remembered at a funeral packed with hundreds of mourners Wednesday. 'With seemingly innate emotional intelligence, Julia knew how to connect in a deep and meaningful way with those around her. Julia was truly wise beyond her age,' her uncle said. 'Julia knew this and lived life with wide open eyes and courage and conviction. She didn't just go to the party. She planned it all, made the playlist and served as the DJ.'
Daily Telegraph
4 days ago
- Daily Telegraph
What NYC shooting means for Australian contact sport's future
Don't miss out on the headlines from Other Sports. Followed categories will be added to My News. The horrific New York City shooting has sparked concerns about the ramifications in Australia, particularly across some of the country's most prolific sporting codes. Details emerging after gunmen Shane Devon Tamura killed four people in an NYC office, before turning the gun on himself, revealed his likely intended target was the offices of the National Football League. The NFL's offices were in the same building but weren't accessible through the elevator Tamura mistakenly used. A note left by the shooter revealed he blamed playing American football (which he played in his youth) for his supposed struggle with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurological disease plaguing many Australian athletes in contact sports. 'Football gave me CTE and it cause me to drink a gallon of antifreeze. You can't go against the NFL. They'll squash you,' Tamura wrote in a in a three-page note found in his wallet. 'Please study brain for CTE. I'm sorry. The league knowingly concealed the dangers to our brains to maximise profits. 'They failed us.' This image from surveillance video obtained by The Associated Press shows Shane Tamura outside a Manhattan office building on Monday, July 28, 2025 in New York. Photo: AP Photo. After his shooting spree, Tamura shot himself in the chest, suspected to be in a bid to avoid his brain in hopes of it being studied. Despite suspecting he had CTE, the condition can only be diagnosed definitively after death. The brain disorder is a form of dementia and occurs typically from repeated concussions and head trauma during a sporting career. Fans of Australian sport will be all too familiar with CTE and the long term impact of athlete concussion, including suicide. Rugby league great and premiership winning coach Paul Green tragically took his own life in 2022, a post mortem analysis revealing he had a severe form of CTE. Across codes, AFL legends Danny Frawley and Shane Tuck had the same diagnosis after their suicides in 2019 and 2020. Tamura played football in high school and in his suicide note blamed the NFL for his suspected CTE condition. Photo: Las Vegas Dept. Motor Vehicle via AP. The NRL community lost former player and coach Paul Green after he committed suicide, with a post-mortem later revealing he had suffered from CTE. Photo:. With the sports bringing in new measures in recent years in hopes of stamping out blunt contact to the head, there are major concerns about the impact of the disease on players given it cannot be diagnosed until it is too late. While yet to be diagnosed, the NYC shooters claims of CTE paint a scary portrait for an affliction Australia's sport is starting to learn much more about. Sports Medicine Australia CEO Jamie Crain warned a lack of understanding around the risks of concussion in professional and community sport in Australia could pose serious long term health issues if not managed properly. But the expert believes this country 'does quite well' dealing with minimising concussion, but after the events in the US, admits people will be on alert to CTE and the possible effects. The priority instead of trying to completely eradicate concussions should be to manage them when they happen. 'Because it will happen, it's just an inherent part of contact sport, certainly with football and rugby and those types of sports,' he said. Danny Frawley took his own life in 2019, after which it was determined he suffered from CTE. Photo: Supplied. Richmond player Shane Tuck suffered from the same condition before suicide in 2020. Photo:. While Crain believes rules may need to be tweaked, the challenge is striking a balance, not becoming so alarmed that parents take their kids out of playing contact sport, as that poses its own issues. 'We might then indirectly encourage a sedentary lifestyle and that brings itself a lot of potential long term health issues. 'There could inevitably be some rule changes that do need to take place within those particular sports to minimise the risk. I think that we won't be able to eradicate it. 'But we do need to manage it and then when concussion does happen, we look after those players in the best possible way.' Originally published as Chilling warning for Australia in wake of New York City bloodbath
ABC News
4 days ago
- ABC News
The NYC gunman who killed four left a note to 'study my brain' for CTE. What does that mean?
The gunman who killed four people inside a New York office this week before turning the gun on himself was carrying a handwritten note that said: "Study my brain." Shane Tamura wrote that he had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) — a brain disease diagnosable only after death — investigators said. But what exactly happened, and what is CTE? The 27-year-old man from Las Vegas killed four people before taking his own life on the 33rd floor of the Park Avenue skyscraper on Monday. Officials said he intended to target the NFL headquarters but took the wrong elevator — instead spraying the lobby of a skyscraper and killing four people: a police officer, a security guard and two people who worked at companies in the building. Police said Tamura had a history of mental illness, and the note found on his body suggested he had a grievance against the NFL over an unsubstantiated claim that he suffered from CTE. In the three-page note found on his body, the gunman accused the NFL of concealing the dangers of brain injuries linked to contact sports for profits. In the note, Tamura "claimed to be suffering from CTE, possibly from playing high school football", New York Police Commissioner Tisch said. "Study my brain. I'm sorry," Tamura was quoted as having written. The note mentioned a 2013 Frontline documentary featuring former NFL players who suffered from CTE, which has no known treatment and can be caused by repeated shaking of the brain associated with playing contact sports. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy can affect regions of the brain involved with regulating behaviour and emotions. This can lead to memory loss, depression, violent mood swings and other cognitive and behavioural issues, though researchers note that these symptoms can also be linked to other illnesses. Experts say symptoms can arise years or decades after the last brain trauma. Evidence of the disease has been found not just in those with long professional careers but in high school athletes as well. We don't know. CTE can be diagnosed only by examining a brain after death, and it is unclear whether he was showing symptoms. Tamura was never an NFL player but he did play high school football in California a decade ago and had a history of mental illness, police said without giving details. The degenerative brain disease has been linked to concussions and other repeated head trauma common in contact sports such as football. According to Boston University's Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center, progressive degeneration of brain tissue in people with CTE includes the build-up of an abnormal protein called tau in a pattern that distinguishes it from other diseases, such as Alzheimer's. Researchers have established a connection between CTE and contact sports, military combat and other activities with repeated blows to the head. After more than a decade of denial, the NFL conceded the link between football and CTE in 2016 testimony before Congress, and has so far paid more than $US1.4 billion ($2.1 billion) to retired players to settle concussion-related claims. The pioneering efforts of forensic pathologist Bennet Omalu led to the diagnosis of CTE in Pittsburgh Steelers Hall of Fame centre Mike Webster — the first in a former NFL player. CTE has been diagnosed in more than 100 former NFL players, including NFL Hall of Famers Ken Stabler, Frank Gifford, Junior Seau and most famously Aaron Hernandez, the former New England Patriots star who killed himself in prison at 27 years old while serving a life sentence for a 2013 murder. Among nearly 2,000 former NFL players, one-third believed they were living with CTE, a 2024 Harvard paper concluded. During the news conference, Commissioner Tisch said the death of Didarul Islam was "yet another reminder of everything you risk just by showing up to work". The 36-year-old Bronx officer was the first of four killed in the attack. He was an immigrant from Bangladesh who served as a police officer in New York City for three and a half years, working in a program that let private companies hire officers for security work. He was married and had two young boys, and his wife was pregnant with their third child, Commissioner Tisch said. Blackstone, one of the world's largest investment firms, confirmed one of its employees, Wesley LePatner, was also among those killed. A Yale graduate, LePatner was a real estate executive, according to Blackstone's website, and she spent more than a decade at Goldman Sachs before joining the firm in 2014. "She was brilliant, passionate, warm, generous, and deeply respected within our firm and beyond," the firm said in a statement. A labour union identified the security officer killed as Aland Etienne. His death "speaks to the sacrifice of security officers" who risked their lives to keep New Yorkers safe, Manny Pastreich, the president of Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, said in a statement. "Aland Etienne is a New York hero," Pastreich said. "We will remember him as such." The last victim killed was Julia Hyman, a 2020 graduate of the Cornell Nolan School of Hotel Administration, who was working as an associate at Rudin Management, according to her alma mater. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said in a memo to staff that a league employee was seriously injured in the attack and was now stable at a hospital. He said that "all of our employees are otherwise safe and accounted for". AP/Reuters/ABC
