Shane Tamura, the man police identified as the gunman in a Midtown office tower shooting, is a former high school football player who left a note in his pocket blaming chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., for his problems. The building he targeted houses the headquarters of the National Football League.
C.T.E., a degenerative disease associated with repeated hits to the head, was first identified almost a century ago in boxers, and it has since been found in soldiers and other athletes in full-contact sports like football, rugby and hockey.
For the moment, though, it is unclear whether Mr. Tamura, 27, had the disease because it can definitively be diagnosed only after an autopsy. Some people later found to have C.T.E. are known to have experienced symptoms including impulsive behavior, depression and suicidal thoughts, and athletes have claimed the disease caused their neurological and cognitive problems.
In a three-page note found in his wallet by the police, Mr. Tamura referred to C.T.E. as the cause of his problems and asked for his brain to be studied, law enforcement sources said.
The note, from which the police released excerpts, also inveighed against the N.F.L., which has offices at 345 Park Avenue, where the shooting took place, saying it had concealed the danger of the sport in favor of profits. The note also referred to Terry Long, the former Pittsburgh Steelers lineman who died in 2005 after drinking antifreeze.
The police said Mr. Tamura carried an AR-15-style rifle into the skyscraper and began firing, killing a New York City police officer and three other people, and critically wounding a fifth person before shooting himself in the chest, rather than the head.
“Study my brain please,” the note said. “I’m sorry.”
But a full diagnosis may not be known for weeks and even months. Specialists at the C.T.E. Center at Boston University and other research centers may be called upon to help study the brain. One of the signatures of the disease is the build up of tau, a protein that accumulates in certain parts of the brain, including the frontal lobe.
Researchers have found the disease in hundreds of athletes, many of whom played football. But playing football does not itself lead to the disease; many football players never develop the cognitive or neurological problems found in those with the disease.
C.T.E. has been found in athletes as young as teenagers, including those who never had diagnosed concussions. Studies have shown that football players who begin playing before the age of 12 are more likely to develop the disease because they will have accumulated more head hits over their lifetime.
Mr. Tamura grew up in Santa Clarita, Calif., and appears to have played running back in high school. He played for nearby Golden Valley High School until his senior year, when he transferred to Granada Hills Charter High School about 12 miles south. (Granada Hills, incidentally, is the alma mater of the Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback John Elway, and the field there is named after Mr. Elway.)
Mr. Tamura was successful enough to get written about multiple times in the local media. There appears to be no record of him playing in college, or in the N.F.L.
It is unclear whether Mr. Tamura suffered symptoms associated with C.T.E. during his playing days, or whether he had been diagnosed with other health issues.
He would not be the first former football player suffering from C.T.E. to turn to violence or to die by suicide. Andre Waters, Dave Duerson, Junior Seau and other former football players have killed themselves with guns, and Mr. Duerson and Mr. Seau appeared to deliberately shoot themselves in the chest so that their brains could be studied. Mr. Duerson, like Mr. Tamura, left a note asking that his brain be studied.
In rare cases, former athletes turned guns on others. Aaron Hernandez, the former New England Patriots star tight end who was found guilty of shooting and killing an acquaintance, later killed himself in prison. In 2017, Mr. Hernandez was diagnosed with a severe form of C.T.E.
In 2021, Phillip Adams, a former N.F.L. cornerback who had returned to his hometown, Rock Hill, S.C., shot and killed five people and died by suicide. Mr. Adams had struggled to find work after his professional career fizzled and had been displaying increasingly erratic behavior.
Researchers have been trying to develop a test for C.T.E. in the living, but results have been uneven. The future of testing for C.T.E. hinges on developing ways of identifying the tau protein without requiring brain samples. Scientists in multiple research institutes are working to identify biomarkers for the disease that can be seen in samples of blood, saliva or spinal fluid or by using brain imaging scans.
Ken Belson is a Times reporter covering sports, power and money at the N.F.L. and other professional sports leagues.
The post Former Football Players With C.T.E. Have Turned to Violence appeared first on New York Times.
