Park Avenue mass shooter Shane Tamura had CTE, NYC Medical Examiner finds

Rocco Parascandola, New York Daily News on Sep 26, 2025

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NEW YORK — Park Avenue gunman Shane Tamura, who killed an NYPD officer and three others before taking his own life in a midtown Manhattan office building, did — as he contended in a suicide note — suffer from the degenerative brain disease known as CTE, the Medical Examiner said Friday.

The examination of Tamura’s, brain “has found unambiguous diagnostic evidence of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, also known as CTE,…” the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said in a statement.

“The findings correspond with the classification of low-stage CTE, according to current consensus criteria,” the statement said. “CTE may be found in the brains of decedents with a history of repeated exposure to head trauma. The science around this condition continues to evolve, and the physical and mental manifestations of CTE remain under study.”

Julie Bolcer, spokeswoman for the ME’s office, said the “ME cannot say how it factored into the incident.”

“The ME,” she added, “is just answering the question of whether the perpetrator had the condition.”

Tamura shocked the city July 28 when he walked into a Midtown office skyscraper at 345 Park Ave. toting an M-4 assault rifle and opened fire in the lobby, police said, killing Officer Didarul Islam, building security guard Aland Etienne and Wesley LePatner, a Blackstone senior executive.

He also shot and wounded an NFL employee, Craig Clementi, though police believe he did not know it at the time.

Tamura then got on the elevator, apparently intent on shooting up the National Football League offices but got off on the 33rd floor, the wrong floor, and instead shot dead Rudin Management executive Julia Hyman before killing himself with a shot to his chest.

“Study my brain, please,” Tamura wrote in a three-page suicide note that police found on him.

“I’m sorry.”

Police sources said Tamura wrote that he had CTE, which can only be diagnosed after death, blaming football for the illness and mentioning Terry Long, the former Pittsburgh Steeler diagnosed with CTE after he drank antifreeze 20 years ago, killing himself.

A study several years ago diagnosed CTE in the brains of more than 320 former NFL players, including New Englad Patriots star Aaron Hernandez, who took his life after he was convicted of a 2013 murder.

“You can’t go against the NFL. They squash you,” Tamura said in hs note, according to police sources.

After the ME’s findings were released Friday, the NFL said in a statement that it still grieves the victims of the Tamura’s mass shooting.

“There is no justification for the horrific acts that took place,” the statement said. “As the medical examiner notes, ‘the science around this condition continues to evolve, and the physical and mental manifestations of CTE remain under study’.”

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