The mother of Shane Devon Tamura was desperate. Her son was inside a motel in Las Vegas, threatening to kill himself, according to a 911 call released on Tuesday by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.
She told the 911 operator she wasn’t sure he was carrying a gun but she knew he owned one and had a backpack with a holster that could hold such a weapon.
“I was just in the apartment with him and he started crying and slamming things,” the mother said in the recording, which the Las Vegas police released Tuesday evening. He had told her “he couldn’t take it anymore.” She left and hid in her car, worried he could see her but too worried to drive off.
“I’m afraid to leave,” she told the caller.
It was September 2022, and police were so concerned about Mr. Tamura, then 24, that they filed an emergency petition to have him committed to a mental health facility following the episode. His mother said he had depression, insomnia, struggled with migraines and was still recovering from a concussion he got from a sports injury.
Less than three years later, Mr. Tamura stormed inside a building in midtown Manhattan, headed for the offices of the National Football League, holding an AR-15-style rifle. He fatally shot four people — a police officer, a security guard, and two office workers — before turning the weapon on himself and shooting himself in the chest.
Police in New York have been trying to get a deeper understanding of Mr. Tamura’s mental health history as they investigate his background and what led him to drive cross country from his studio apartment in Las Vegas to a skyscraper in Manhattan, where he committed the worst shooting in the city in 25 years.
On Tuesday, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department released documents and recordings of 911 calls that provided a clearer picture of the mental health struggles of Mr. Tamura, a former high school football player who appeared to blame the National Football League for traumatic brain injuries.
The New York building where the attacks occurred, 345 Park Avenue, housed the headquarters of the National Football League. Mr. Tamura had a three-page note in his wallet that referred to chronic traumatic encephalopathy and blamed the league for downplaying the condition. The degenerative brain disease has been associated with repeated hits to the head, and can be definitively diagnosed only after death.
Mr. Tamura left behind two suicide notes, one found in his wallet at the crime scene, begging doctors to study his brain.
This is a developing story and will be updated.