In a suicide note found in his wallet, the gunman who killed five people and himself Monday mentioned chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a condition linked to repeated head trauma that can only be definitively diagnosed after death, The New York Times reports.
The shooting occurred at a New York office building housing NFL offices. The note blamed the league for concealing the dangers of football in favor of profits. It specifically referenced former NFL player Terry Long, who died by drinking antifreeze in 2005.
Authorities have not confirmed whether the gunman, identified as Shane Tamura — a former high school football player from Santa Clarita, California — suffered from CTE. An autopsy will determine if his brain showed signs of the condition. But police believe Tamura targeted the league out of vengeance.
Experts caution against linking CTE directly to violent acts. “I would never draw a direct line between someone’s brain pathology and any specific violent act because the majority of people who have CTE never committed anything like this,” the Times quoted Dr Daniel H Daneshvar, chief of brain injury rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School, as saying.
Tamura requested, in his suicide note, that his brain be analyzed for chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
The Boston University UNITE Brain Bank is the largest tissue repository in the world focused on traumatic brain injury (TBI) and CTE. The research team conducts high-impact, innovative research on CTE and other long-term consequences of repetitive brain trauma in athletes, military personnel, and first responders. The brain bank contains more than 1,500 brains, including over 800 brains that have been diagnosed with CTE using newly defined diagnostic tests.
