Gunman who killed 4 at Manhattan office building was targeting NFL headquarters, mayor says

New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Tuesday that a gunman who killed four people at a Manhattan office building a day earlier was trying to target the headquarters of the National Football League but took the wrong elevator.

Investigators believe Shane Tamura was trying to get to the NFL offices after shooting several people in the building's lobby but accidentally entered the wrong set of elevator banks, Adams said in interviews on Tuesday. 

Four people, including an off-duty New York City police officer, were killed. Police said Tamura had a history of mental illness, and a rambling note found on his body suggested he had a grievance against the NFL over an unsubstantiated claim that he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). He had played football in high school in California nearly two decades ago.

The note claimed he had been suffering from CTE — the degenerative brain disease that has been linked to concussions and other repeated head trauma common in contact sports like football — and said his brain should be studied after he died, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.

It also specifically referenced the National Football League, the person said.

The rampage happened at the end of the workday in the same part of Manhattan where the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare was gunned down outside a hotel late last year.

Surveillance video showed the man Monday exiting a double-parked BMW just before 6:30 p.m. carrying an M4 rifle, then marching across a public plaza into the building. Then, he started firing, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said, killing a police officer working a corporate security detail and then hitting a woman who tried to take cover as he sprayed the lobby