THE NEW YORK TIMES: Manhattan gunman drove across United States before building shooting
The gunman who killed four people and then himself inside a Manhattan office building Monday had arrived in New York City just hours before, after driving cross-country for days from his home in Nevada, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Monday night.
Ms Tisch identified the man as Shane Tamura, 27, and said it was unclear what had motivated him to drive from Las Vegas to unleash mayhem in the heart of Manhattan at the end of the work day.
Speaking beside Mayor Eric Adams at a news conference, she said that law enforcement in Nevada had told the police department that Tamura had “a documented mental health history” but did not elaborate. She said he appeared to have acted alone.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.“We are still unraveling what took place,” the mayor said.
The rampage took place at 345 Park Avenue, a skyscraper blocks from Rockefeller Center and St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The workplace mass shooting was particularly shocking in the centre of New York City, where such attacks are virtually unheard of.
Ms Tisch said that Tamura’s car was recorded passing through Colorado on Saturday, then Nebraska and Iowa on Sunday, before he arrived in New York City on Monday afternoon.
He drove to Park Avenue, where he double parked his BMW just outside the skyscraper. He then marched inside with an AR-15-style rifle and began to spray the lobby with gunfire, peeking behind a security desk to shoot one of his victims and firing on another who tried to take cover behind a pillar.
He then walked to the elevator bank, waited for an elevator to take him upstairs, letting a woman exit the car and walk safely past him before he got on and rode it to the 33rd floor.
Once there, he went to the office of Rudin Management, a real estate firm, where he shot someone and then fatally shot himself in the chest.
The police department said Tamura was from Las Vegas. On Monday night, police vehicles blocked the entrances to the gated community where he was believed to have lived, and a street elsewhere in the neighbourhood was closed off with police tape and traffic cones.
Public records indicate that Tamura spent at least part of his youth in California. Mason Thomas said he had played high school football with Tamura in Granada Hills, a neighbourhood of Los Angeles. But he said they had lost contact with each other years ago.
Nevertheless, he said it was “mind-blowing” to see an old high school teammate in the news for a fatal shooting spree. He said he remembered Tamura as a standout running back who was funny, popular and agreeable.
“There was nothing from the little I knew about him that would have indicated anything like this,” Mr Thomas said. “At practice, there were never any issues I can remember. He never had issues with anybody.”
In Santa Clarita, a city north of Los Angeles, Debi Hatfield, said she remembered the Tamura family well. They had been neighbours for a decade, and Shane and his brother played with her children and went to elementary school with her daughter, she said.
“They were typical kids,” Ms Hatfield said, looking across the quiet cul-de-sac at the family’s former home, as crickets chirped in the cool night air. She said she remembered Shane “as just a little kid following his older brother around. It’s really shocking.”
In recent years, Tamura had received traffic citations in Nevada and was charged with criminal trespass, records show. It was not immediately clear what had led to the trespassing charge.
Records show that a person with the same name as Tamura held a work card issued by the state board that regulates security guards, private investigators and similar professionals in Nevada from December 2019 to December 2024. The work card did not authorise the person to carry a firearm.
It was not clear why Tamura was in New York City or what had motivated him to open fire inside the building, which is home to the offices of several high-powered companies, including investment giant Blackstone, the NFL, and accounting and financial advisory firm KPMG.
The shooting Monday was the second high profile shooting in midtown Manhattan in less than a year. Last December, Luigi Mangione traveled to New York City from out of town and staged a targeted attack on a health care executive, Brian Thompson, in midtown, prosecutors say.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times
Originally published on The New York Times
