The tragic shooting at a Manhattan office tower on July 28, 2025, which claimed the lives of four people and left one wounded, has reignited urgent debates about the dangers of brain injuries in contact sports and the lingering responsibilities of powerful organizations like the NFL. The gunman, 27-year-old Shane Tamura, was a former high school football player from Southern California who, according to the New York City medical examiner’s report released this week, suffered from low-stage chronic traumatic encephalopathy—better known as CTE.
CTE, a progressive and degenerative brain disease, is caused by repeated head trauma. Its symptoms—aggression, memory loss, paranoia, emotional instability, and even suicidal thoughts—have haunted athletes in contact sports for decades. Yet, as WebMD and experts cited by Straight Arrow News note, the disease can only be definitively diagnosed after death. In Tamura’s case, the confirmation came after a thorough neuropathological assessment by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) in New York City. Their statement was unambiguous: “Following a thorough assessment and extensive analysis by our neuropathology experts, OCME has found unambiguous diagnostic evidence of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, also known as CTE, in the brain tissue of the decedent. The findings correspond with the classification of low-stage CTE, according to current consensus criteria.”
The story of how Tamura’s life spiraled toward tragedy is as complex as it is heartbreaking. He grew up in Southern California, playing football at Granada Hills Charter School and Golden Valley High in Santa Clarita. Friends and former teammates recalled him as quiet and respectful. “This is so shocking. I’m telling you, this was one of those kids who never exerted bad energy or a negative attitude. He was quiet, but when he did actually talk, people listened,” former teammate Anthony Michael Leon told NBC News (as reported by Los Angeles Times).
After high school, Tamura did not play college or professional football. Instead, he moved to Las Vegas, where he worked as a security guard at the Horseshoe Las Vegas hotel and casino. But beneath the surface, Tamura struggled. He’d been hospitalized twice for mental health crises, once in 2022 and again in 2024, according to police and his mother’s 911 calls. She described her son as suffering from “depression, concussion like sports concussion, chronic migraines, and insomnia.” In 2023, he was arrested on a misdemeanor trespassing charge after becoming agitated at a Las Vegas casino—though the case was later dismissed.
On the day of the shooting, Tamura drove his BMW across the country from Las Vegas to New York, arriving just hours before the attack. He entered the skyscraper at 345 Park Avenue, which houses the NFL’s headquarters, but took the wrong elevator and ended up on another floor. There, he killed police officer Didarul Islam, security guard Aland Etienne, Blackstone senior executive Wesley LePatner, and real estate employee Julia Hyman. NFL employee Craig Clementi was shot and wounded but survived. Tamura then turned the gun on himself, ending his life with a shot to the chest.
Authorities later found two handwritten notes from Tamura—one in his wallet and another at his Las Vegas home. In these, he blamed the NFL for hiding the dangers of CTE, accused the league of putting profits over player safety, and pleaded: “Study my brain.” He also apologized to his family. “Football gave me CTE,” Tamura reportedly wrote in his three-page suicide note, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The NFL, for its part, issued a statement of condolence and caution. “We continue to grieve the senseless loss of lives, and our hearts remain with the victims’ families and our dedicated employees,” the league said, as reported by ESPN. “There is no justification for the horrific acts that took place. As the medical examiner notes, ‘the science around this condition continues to evolve, and the physical and mental manifestations of CTE remain under study.’”
For years, the NFL denied any connection between football and CTE. But in 2016, after mounting pressure and damning research, the league acknowledged the link in testimony before Congress. Since then, it has paid more than $1.4 billion to retired players to settle concussion-related claims, according to Associated Press. Still, the science is far from settled, and the league’s critics argue that more needs to be done for player safety and transparency.
Medical experts caution against drawing a straight line from CTE to violent acts. Dr. Daniel Daneshvar, chief of brain injury rehabilitation and associate professor at Harvard University, told Associated Press that even a low-stage CTE diagnosis can be responsible for “behavioral changes and impulse control problems,” but added, “Pulling the string and figuring out which process is responsible for someone’s actions is not something we’re able to do.” Chris Nowinski, co-founder of the Concussion Legacy Foundation, echoed this sentiment, telling the Los Angeles Times, “It’s very clear that most people who have developed CTE have not become murderers, and most people have not had extraordinary psychiatric symptoms that involve them to have involuntary psychiatric holds.”
Yet, the prevalence of CTE among former football players—even those who only played in high school—remains a sobering reality. “The odds of having CTE are best correlated to the number of seasons played,” Nowinski said. “The best window we have is we have studied 45 former high school players who died before 30, and 31% had CTE.” Daneshvar added, “Of the 3.97 million football players in this country, those that are playing at the college and the professional level are less than 4%, so we’re talking about over 96% of people are playing at some youth or high school level.”
As the dust settles on this tragedy, families of the victims, the NFL, and the broader sports community are left grappling with difficult questions. How can the risks of CTE be better communicated and mitigated? What responsibility do leagues and schools bear in protecting young athletes? And how can mental health support be improved for those who struggle in the shadows?
For now, the medical examiner’s report stands as a stark reminder of the real, lasting dangers of repeated head trauma—and a call for greater vigilance in both research and prevention. The lives lost in Manhattan, and the troubled path that led Shane Tamura there, will not soon be forgotten.
