The one-time football player who massacred four people in a Manhattan skyscraper was suffering from the degenerative brain disease known as CTE, an autopsy has revealed.
Shane Tamura, who fatally shot himself in the chest after the July attack, carried a note that said he was targeting NFL executives because he felt they had concealed the risk of brain trauma in the sport to protect their profits.
“Please study brain for CTE,” his note read, according to police. “I’m sorry. The league knowingly concealed the dangers to our brains to maximize profits. They failed us.”
Police said the 27-year-old arrived at the NFL’s building armed with a rifle but took the wrong elevator when attempting to reach its offices. Instead, he exited on another floor and opened fire on employees of Blackstone and Rudin Management, and also killed a responding New York Police Department officer.
Tamura played high school football in Los Angeles, but never at the collegiate or professional level. Still, his note indicated he believed he had CTE, short for chronic traumatic encephalopathy, because he suffered repeated head injuries while playing the sport.
CTE can only be diagnosed posthumously. Studies show that the majority of former NFL players suffer from the disease, which leads to memory loss, difficulty focusing, confusion, impaired judgment, and decision-making. More severe symptoms include an increased risk of suicide and profound neurodegeneration that affects a person’s ability to care for themselves.
Police said Tamura, who was living in Las Vegas, drove across the country to commit the mass murder. The medical examiner was asked to study his brain because of his note, officials said.
The medical examiner’s office found “unambiguous diagnostic evidence of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, also known as CTE,” officials told the New York Post.
“It is unambiguously there, and it is what is known as low-stage CTE,” a spokeswoman with the medical examiner’s office told the paper. “We’re answering that question that many people wanted to know the answer to.”
The NFL has taken steps in recent years to curb head injuries. It altered rules for kickoffs in 2025 to reduce the number of violent collisions and, starting last year, allowed players to wear so-called “Guardian Caps”—a soft-shell padding that, while criticized by traditionalists for looking abnormal, absorbs much of the contact on hits to the helmet—during games.
While Tamura’s suspicion of CTE has been confirmed, officials have stopped short of saying that the disease should be blamed for the cold-blooded murders.
“We’re unable, as I don’t think science would be able to at all at this point, to say what role CTE played in that particular incident, causing that incident,” the medical examiner spokeswoman told the Post. “We’re not saying that CTE is the cause of what happened.”
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