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They were the sort of people who could be found working into the evening in an office building anywhere across the city: a police officer with a baby on the way, picking up off-duty security shifts beside the longtime lobby guard. A senior executive at an investment giant, and a young associate with less than a year at her firm, each in the office building at 6:30 p.m. on Monday when a shooter burst into 345 Park Avenue, and killed them all.
Armed with an AR-15-style rifle, the man sprayed the lobby with bullets, first shooting the police officer, Didarul Islam, 36.
Behind a pillar, he found Wesley LePatner, 43, a senior executive at Blackstone and mentor to young women, and shot her.
As he made his way to the elevator, he fired at the security guard, Aland Etienne, 46, as the guard took cover behind a front desk.
Up on the 33rd floor, he began shooting as soon as the doors opened, killing Julia Hyman, 27, an associate at Rudin Management, the real estate firm that owns the building.
Then he turned his gun on himself.
Police identified the assailant as Shane Tamura, a 27-year-old man who had driven to the city from his home in Las Vegas. A note found in Mr. Tamura’s wallet claimed that he was suffering from a degenerative brain disease — C.T.E., chronic traumatic encephalopathy — that he blamed on his past as a high school football player, though the disease can only be diagnosed post-mortem. The note also accused the National Football League, which has offices in the Park Avenue tower, of covering up the dangers of C.T.E.
Once through the building’s imposing glass facade, Mr. Tamura sprayed the lobby of white Vermont marble with bullets, mortally striking Officer Islam, a father of two boys with a baby due in a few weeks.
Officer Islam was working as a paid security guard that evening. It was a return to the sort of work that had inspired him, an immigrant from Bangladesh, to join the police force 3½ years ago, according to Marjanul Karim, 31, a close family friend. Mr. Karim said his friend “came as an immigrant, started working as a security guard at a school,” and found purpose mentoring other young Bangladeshi men, including him.
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“He wanted to support his family and be in a better position, and he fell in love with law enforcement while working security,” Mr. Karim said of his friend, an officer in the city’s 47th Precinct. “At the time, my mother told him, ‘You left a safe job working for a school in security, and being a cop is dangerous. Why did you do that?’ He told her he wanted to leave behind a legacy for his family, something they could be proud of.”
The pain of the officer’s killing was also felt thousands of miles away in Bangladesh. Mizanul Haque, a cousin of Officer Islam’s, said the officer’s close relatives in Sylhet in the nation’s east were left speechless by the news, which Mr. Haque had arranged to be shared over the loudspeaker of the local mosque.
“He worked very hard to get to this position,” Mr. Haque said. “Now, everything ended.”
He was a generous donor to his local mosque and a conscientious landlord, his tenants said; his colleagues remembered him as a quiet man who, once he opened up, had the gift of gab.
“He was saving lives. He was protecting New Yorkers,” Mayor Eric Adams said on Monday at a news conference at the Manhattan hospital where Officer Islam was pronounced dead. “He embodies what this city is all about.”
The gunman’s second victim, Ms. LePatner, was one of Blackstone’s top-ranking women. Ms. LePatner had a stellar résumé that included Goldman Sachs and Yale University, where she graduated summa cum laude, and, according to a friend, met her husband on the first day of class in 1999. Colleagues and friends said her passions were mentoring young people and time with her husband and her two children.
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“She was the most effortless and impressive person — you wanted to follow her wherever she went,” the author Bruce Feiler, who said he had served on a board with her, wrote in an online post. In a statement, her family said Ms. LePatner “enriched our lives in every way imaginable.”
She was committed to doing the same for others, serving on several boards, including those of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the UJA-Federation of New York, a charitable organization focused on Jewish causes, which in 2023 honored her with a leadership award.
On a Zoom call with Blackstone employees across the world on Tuesday, the firm’s president, Jonathan Gray, teared up as he spoke about Ms. LePatner. She had a sense of purpose in everything she did, Mr. Gray told employees, describing her huge heart and deep commitment to family.
“She was just this amazing light,” Mr. Gray said in an interview.
Past her, the gunman headed toward the elevator bank, and its security guard, Mr. Etienne. He was naturally gregarious, a sister Mabline Etienne, said in a telephone interview, the lighthearted pillar of their family. A day after his death, she said she could not stop thinking about her big brother’s warm, inviting smile.
Mr. Etienne charmed all he met at 345 Park Avenue, too, and was described in a statement by the owners of the building, the Rudin family, as “beloved.” Manny Pastreich, the president of Local 32BJ, Mr. Etienne’s union, called him a “dedicated security officer who took his job duties extremely seriously.” He added: “Aland Etienne is a New York hero. We will remember him as such.”
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Mr. Etienne was most fulfilled, his sister said, when he spent time with family, including his two young children. In a phone call, his brother, Gathmand Etienne, said he was too bereft to speak, but said in a social media post that “he was more than a brother.”
“He was a father, a son, and a light in our lives,” he wrote. “Our hearts are shattered.”
When the elevator doors opened on the 33rd floor, Ms. Hyman, a young associate, was working late.
Ms. Hyman was a New Yorker, a graduate of the Riverdale Country School in the Bronx. She was not just a varsity athlete in soccer, swimming and lacrosse, but the captain of all three teams her senior year, according to a letter sent to the student body on Tuesday by Kari Ostrem, the head of school. At Riverdale, she was a leader of the peer mentoring program and received the school’s prestigious Founders Award, presented to “that young woman who best demonstrated outstanding ability, leadership, and sportsmanship and the qualities of hard work, excellent attitude and responsibility to her teammates and school,” Ms. Ostrem’s letter said.
Her family declined to comment through a spokesman.
Brian Carver and Cat Crocker, who were her deans at Riverdale, said in a joint statement that Ms. Hyman stood out for her “modesty and humility, her desire to see others succeed, and her grit and tenacity in the face of adversity.” Milton Sipp, the head of Riverdale’s middle school, wrote that she had a “heart of gold.”
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In a statement Rudin called her a “cherished” colleague. Michael I. Kotlikoff, the president of Cornell University, said that Ms. Hyman graduated summa cum laude from the university with a major in hotel and restaurant administration and a minor in real estate. She appeared to be a member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, according to information on her Facebook page.
“We are devastated,” Mr. Kotlikoff wrote in a statement.
Troy Closson, Rob Copeland, Maria Cramer, Maureen Farrell, Santul Nerkar, Wesley Parnell, Anushka Patil, Taylor Robinson, Dionne Searcey and Michael Wilson contributed reporting from New York City. Saif Hasnat contributed reporting from Dhaka, Bangladesh. Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
Sarah Maslin Nir is a Times reporter covering anything and everything New York ... and sometimes beyond.
