A deadly shooting has occurred at the Rudin-owned 345 Park Avenue, home to Blackstone’s headquarters.
Four people are dead, including one police officer, after a man opened fire in the building between East 51st and East 52nd streets Monday evening, the New York Times reported. The gunman was reportedly found dead in Rudin Management’s 33rd-floor office.
The names of all the victims have yet to be released, but one person confirmed dead is Blackstone’s BREIT CEO Wesley LePatner.
“Words cannot express the devastation we feel,” Blackstone said in a statement, the Associated Press reported. “Wesley was a beloved member of the Blackstone family and will be sorely missed. She was brilliant, passionate, warm, generous, and deeply respected within our firm and beyond.”
According to reports, the incident began around 6 p.m., usually the time workers are leaving the building. The 44-story property is home to Blackstone, the NFL as well as KPMG and Deutsche Bank.
Mayor Eric Adams said Tuesday that the gunman, identified as Shane Devon Tamura, 27, of Las Vegas, was trying to reach the NFL’s headquarters but took the wrong elevator and ended up at Rudin’s offices on the 33rd floor, where he fatally shot a female Rudin employee and then himself.
Police said a rambling note found on his body suggested that Tamura was targeting the NFL because he believed he had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a brain disease associated with repeated head trauma. He had played high school football and had a history of mental illness, police told the AP.
Tamura double-parked a BMW at 6:28 p.m., crossed a public plaza carrying an M4 rifle, entered the building and started firing, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said, killing Didarul Islam, 36, the off-duty police officer working a corporate security detail in his NYPD uniform, and also shooting LePatner, who had taken cover behind a pillar in the lobby.
Heading for the elevator bank, he shot and killed another security guard, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said. Another man was shot in the lobby and was in critical but stable condition.
Tamura allowed a woman to exit the elevator unharmed as he entered it.
Gov. Kathy Hochul described Tamura’s weapon as an “AR-15–style assault rifle,” which is not legal in New York. Nevada issued him a permit to carry the weapon in Nevada in 2022, the New York Post reported. “According to our law enforcement partners in Las Vegas, Mr. Tamura has a documented mental health history,” Tisch said at a news conference.
The commissioner said Tamura’s vehicle traveled through Colorado on July 26, Nebraska and Iowa on July 27, and Columbia, New Jersey, at 4:24 p.m. the day of the shooting. Medication prescribed to Tamura was found in the vehicle, along with a rifle case with rounds, a loaded revolver, ammunition and magazines, and a backpack.
Hochul ordered flags across the state lowered to half mast until the victims are laid to rest.
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Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated how the gunman died. We regret the error.