Less than an hour after the shocking shooting at 345 Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, the mother of the slain NYPD officer — identified as one of the four victims — arrived at the scene, dazed and nearly collapsed. She was helped by two relatives, asking repeatedly, “Where is he? Where is my son? Please, let me see him.” A rescue worker tried to calm her down, but no one had the courage to tell her the truth at that moment.
About 15 minutes later, as the press began to converge on the heavily cordoned-off area, she was told that her son — an off-duty NYPD officer on security duty at the building — had been shot multiple times by the suspect, Shane Tamura, 27, and had died. When she heard the news, she didn’t scream or collapse — she just stood there, speechless, tears streaming down her face. It took nearly five minutes before she finally spoke, trembling and tearful: “That guy was a monster… He didn’t just kill my son, he killed my soul.”
She spoke in a choked voice, her hands clutching her coat as if trying to hold on to the last thing she had left. “My son was only 29. He wasn’t married. He told me this morning that after this shift, he was taking a few days off to go home and have dinner with his family. I cooked his favorite meatballs. Now what? I’m standing here… waiting for the forensics team to take my son’s body out of a building covered in blood.”
Outside, the sirens of police and ambulances continued to blare. The scene was still cordoned off, with no one allowed to access the area except the NYPD and federal special forces. There was no time to hold a funeral, and the full identities of the victims had not yet been officially released. New York City held its breath in an atmosphere of grief and anger.
Several colleagues of the slain officer said he was the first to run from his post when he saw the suspect carrying a gun. He reportedly tried to stop Shane Tamura in the ground-floor lobby before being shot multiple times in the chest and neck. “He didn’t run. He acted like a hero,” said an unnamed NYPD officer.
But for the mother who lost her son, any praise at this point is just vague sounds. “I don’t want him to be called a hero,” she said through tears. “I just want him to live. I want to hear him say ‘mommy’ one more time.”
There is no specific date for the funeral, as the body is still being taken to the medical examiner’s office for an autopsy. But one thing is certain: this is no longer an isolated incident, but a new wound in the heart of a city that has become accustomed to violence. And in that wound, there is a mother still standing in the middle of the street, holding tightly the bloody photo of her son, whispering: “You kept your promise to protect the city… but who will protect you?”
