Manhattan shooting renews focus on CTE, concussion risks in amateur sports

NEW YORK :A deadly Manhattan office shooting by former high school football player Shane Tamura has renewed attention on how head injuries are managed in amateur football.

Tamura, 27, fatally shot four people before killing himself, leaving a note blaming chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, and the NFL for his actions. National Football League headquarters are in the Park Avenue building where the shooting occurred.

Tamura, who played at a Los Angeles charter school, had not been diagnosed with CTE, which can only be confirmed post-mortem. New York City's Office of Chief Medical Examiner said it will conduct a neuropathological assessment during his autopsy, with results expected in a few weeks.

But persistent questions about the effectiveness of strategies for tracking and managing repeated head trauma in young athletes are again facing scrutiny.

Karissa Niehoff, CEO of the National Federation of State High School Associations that oversees high school football in the U.S., said her organization "does not know how many serious concussions are reported each year.”

"Concussions occur among all age groups and in many activities, but are often not reported. Those at the scholastic level might involve reporting to a school nurse, athletic trainer, or coach," Niehoff said.

Concussions are sometimes called "snowflake injuries" to reflect their unique and unpredictable nature. Monitoring student-athletes is difficult for organizations like the NFHS, since state associations have no oversight once students graduate.

A 2023 Boston University CTE Center study that examined the brains of 152 youth, high school, and college athletes, most of them football players, who had died under age 30, found 41 per cent showed signs of CTE.