Mass shooter targeting a building in New York City kills five before himself.

 

A photo of the suspect from a security camera. New York Post.

A mass shooter has targeted a building in New York City, killing five people, including a police officer, before killing himself. New York Post. The 27 year old suspect, identified as Shane Tamura from Las Vegas Nevada, opened fire at 345 Park Avenue, a 44 story skyscraper that houses the NFL and Blackstone. The attacker casually walked into the building with a rifle in hand and then went to the 33rd story and opened fire. A police office, who was working security in the building, and was shot in the back and killed. No motive has been released for the murder. Two possibly unrelated protesters were arrested at the scene of the shooting saying "Free Palestine, I'm not the shooter". 

NBC News has live updates for this incident.

My Comment:

Disturbing incident out of New York City. As a breaking news story, keep in mind that news may break quickly and could be rapidly out of date. As of this writing there is no indication of motive and no conclusive number of dead and injured. Check the live updates link above for the latest. 

There are already people beclowning themselves over this shooting. CNN already identified the attacker as being White when he's clearly mixed race, presumably a mix of Japanese, given his surname, and Black, given his appearance. His race probably isn't a factor but it is insane that folks were blaming this attack on White people before the bodies were even cool. 

There doesn't seem to be any reliable information about what business was attacked, just the floor, #33. I don't think the two companies mentioned in the post, the NFL and the investment firm Blackstone, were the targets of this attack. 

But this absolutely seems like a targeted attack. You don't go across the entire country, essentially, to shoot up a random office building. I don't know if he flew there (you can transport weapons across state lines) or drove there, but either way, that's a lot of effort if you are just targeting random people. Las Vegas to New York is no small journey so I am guessing that this attacker had specific targets in mind, and it's unclear if who or what he was targeting and if he was successful or not. I guess it's always possible that this attack was the product of a diseased mind and was targeting this building for reasons that might not even had made sense to the shooter, but that seems unlikely. 

There are already calls for more gun control in the wake of this incident but I don't think anything would have helped. The gun and armor the attacker used is already banned in New York, doubly so for New York City. The attacker, which passed enough background checks to get a CCW license, did not have any trouble with those laws as they did not actually stop him from bringing a weapon with him. 

I also wonder how bad the security of this building was. The man was able to simply walk in the front door. It's unclear if he had to shoot his way in, but the only security seems to be the cop that got shot in the back. Maybe he was the first one that got killed? I guess my impression is that in New York City seeing a man walking down the street with a camo'ed up AR that the police and security would have noticed and done something about that. Maybe that is naivety on my part.  

Regardless, I get the feeling that this is a Luigi Mangione situation. Mangione became a folk hero for the left for murdering a healthcare CEO. It's very possible that this is a similar situation, someone killing for a political cause. But it is also very possible that this is a personal grudge kind of situation as well. Hopefully we will all find out soon enough.