Ten years ago, the place where Shane Devon Tamura shined brightest was on the football field, clad in a green helmet and uniform as a clutch running back for his Los Angeles-area high school.
Fresh off a game-clinching touchdown for Granada Hills Charter School in September 2015, the senior varsity player told a local news outlet that the team’s success was all about staying “disciplined.”
“Just hold our heads up high,” Tamura said, “and then a good result is going to come.”
But in recent years, Tamura was apparently plagued by psychological issues and displayed troubling behavior. He experienced two mental health incidents in 2022 and 2024, according to law enforcement officials briefed on the investigation. In the fall of 2023, he was arrested at a Las Vegas casino on suspicion of criminal trespassing, according to court records.
Then, in midtown Manhattan on Monday, Tamura’s apparent downward spiral reached a horrific climax. He opened fire inside a high-rise on Park Avenue, killing four people, including a New York City police officer. Tamura, 27, ultimately turned an AR-style rifle on himself and fired a fatal shot into his chest, according to the city police commissioner.
In a note left behind at the scene, Tamura repeatedly mentioned “CTE” — chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a brain condition caused by injuries to the head. Authorities say Tamura intended to target the corporate headquarters of the National Football League.
Tamura’s shooting spree baffled people who knew him best as a promising young athlete.
“There was never anything that would even correlate to this type of story,” said Anthony Michael Leon, who played with Tamura on the Granada Hills varsity football team in their senior year. “The Shane Tamura that we knew — the 17, 18-year-old kid who went to our school — was nothing like this.”
‘Big things’ ahead
Shane Devon Tamura was born on Jan. 19, 1998, in Las Vegas, though his family eventually wound up in California. Tamura attended at least two Los Angeles-area high schools. He started out at Golden Valley High School, in the suburb of Santa Clarita, and then transferred to Granada Hills Charter, in the San Fernando Valley.
In interviews, former teammates and coaches described Tamura as a talented running back who kept his focus on the field and moved swiftly. In late March 2015, Golden Valley High coach Dan Kelley told The Los Angeles Times that he was “looking for big things” from Tamura.
Lucas Leppke, one of Tamura’s teammates at Golden Valley, said they first met at a football camp before the eighth grade and played together through high school, making mutual friends.
“He was our guy” on the field, Leppke said.
Tamura’s older brother, Terry, also played on the school’s team. The brothers’ parents attended every game growing up, Leppke said, and Shane was known for being polite to the other players’ parents.
“My mom did the team meals and she remembers every time he interacted he was like, ‘Yes, ma’am, ‘no, ma’am,’ ‘thank you,’” Leppke said.
During his junior year, Tamura was having trouble academically and those issues were serious enough that he wasn’t going to be eligible to play in his senior year, according to Caleb Clarke, a classmate. Tamura tried to return to football by playing “summer ball” after his grades improved, but Tamura didn’t like that he wasn’t going to be the starting running back, Clarke said.
Tamura transferred to Granada Hills Charter after that. At his new school, Tamura continued to impress on the gridiron. Walter Roby, who coached Tamura there, said he was a “great player” who was “real elusive, real agile.”
“He came in, worked hard, kept his nose down,” Roby added. “He was a quiet kid, well-mannered, very coachable. Whatever needed to be done, he would do.”
It’s not clear whether Tamura graduated from high school. In a statement, Granada Hills Charter said he “attended the 2015 Fall Semester and has had no connection with the school since his withdrawal a decade ago.” Tamura does not appear to have played football professionally after his student days.
Clarke and Leppke said they kept up with Tamura on social media in more recent years, although he rarely posted. In one of his last Instagram posts, in April 2024, Tamura is seen wagering at a gaming table at the Red Rock Casino Resort and Spa in Las Vegas.
Tamura captioned the post: “Wanted dead or alive.”
Troubled times
Tamura returned to Las Vegas sometime after high school. He most recently had a job in the surveillance department at the Horseshoe, a casino hotel on the Strip that is owned and operated by Caesars Entertainment. In a statement, a Horseshoe spokesperson said the casino was cooperating with law enforcement and would not publicly comment on the matter.
The details of Tamura’s life as a 20-something in Las Vegas were still coming into focus this week. Records show that Tamura had a work card issued by the Nevada Private Investigators Licensing Board from 2019 to 2024. The work card did not authorize him to carry a firearm.
It was not clear whether Tamura ever practiced as a private investigator.
Las Vegas court records show that Tamura was arrested at the Red Rock Casino on Sept. 27, 2023, and charged with trespassing.
The police report says Tamura was gambling at a table, where he was approached by a casino security officer who asked to see his ID. Tamura refused, and the security officer asked him to leave. Tamura then stopped at the cashier cage to collect his winnings — roughly $5,000 — and again refused to show his ID to collect the money. Security called the police for assistance.
Tamura, who appeared “agitated,” was escorted out of the casino and into the parking lot, but he refused to leave the property, according to the report. He was arrested on suspicion of trespass after a verbal warning and taken to the Clark County Detention Center.
Nevada authorities say Tamura experienced two mental health incidents, one in 2022 and one in 2024, according to law enforcement officials briefed on the investigation. The specific nature of those incidents is not known, and it’s not clear whether they would have precluded Tamura from legally possessing a gun.
Day of violence
In recent days, Tamura drove a BMW across the country. The car went through Colorado on Saturday, then Nebraska and Iowa on Sunday. It was in Columbia, New Jersey, as recently as 4:24 p.m. Monday, according to New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch — and it entered Manhattan shortly thereafter, she said.
Security video showed Tamura exit the double-parked black BMW while holding a rifle. He walked into 345 Park Ave. and unleashed a hail of bullets, killing New York City police officer Didarul Islam, Blackstone executive Wesley LePatner, security officer Aland Etienne, and real estate company employee Julia Hyman.
Tamura died by suicide from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the torso, according to the New York City Medical Examiner. In a three-page note Tamura left behind at the scene, he accused the NFL of knowingly concealing the dangers to football players’ brains. “Please study brain for CTE,” Tamura wrote.
NYPD detectives who searched Tamura’s home in Nevada found ammunition and a notepad containing a handwritten message to his family. Tamura wrote that he saw the disappointment in their eyes, and he was sorry.
The medical examiner’s office said it does not have plans to send Tamura’s brain to other researchers since it has an in-house neuropathology expert.
But Dr. Ann McKee, the director of the Unite Brain Bank at Boston University, which studies CTE, said she would be interested in doing research on his brain for signs of the degenerative disease.
McKee was among the researchers whose names Tamura had scrawled in his note.
“I know he played high school football, and our research does show that high school football players are at risk for CTE,” McKee said on NBC News NOW, adding that the disease can “affect young people even in their teenage years, and it is a disease that gets worse with aging.”
Tamura’s former teammates who spoke to NBC News said his position as a running back and defensive back put Tamura, who was 5-foot-7 and 140 pounds, in frequent contact during plays.
Dalone Neal, a Golden Valley teammate, said the coaches would sometimes have Tamura sit out because “he would take a lot of blows to the head” as he tried to run through other players. “He was a small guy but always was ready for hard contact,” Neal said in a text message.
“For someone like him, I wouldn’t even think it’s necessarily the concussions, but you can get hit every play, every other play,” Leppke said. “It’s like those little hits to the head are, I think, what do a lot of the damage later on in life.”
“I feel sorry for the 13-year-old kid who I first knew,” Leppke added. “But the adult he turned into is not exactly the path you ever wanted anyone to take.”
