The gunman who killed four people in a mass shooting in a Manhattan skyscraper on Monday night mentioned chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in a note found on his body, according to New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
‘He talked about CTE. He was not an NFL player,’ Adams told MSNBC. ‘We have reason to believe that he was focused on the NFL agency that was located in the building, and we will continue to investigate with our federal partners to ensure that we can find a reason.’
According to Adams, the shooter had been trying to get into the NFL offices located in the same building where the shooting occurred, but he took the wrong elevator.
CTE is a degenerative brain disease that ’causes the death of nerve cells in the brain,’ according to the Mayo Clinic. It has been tied to repeated head injuries that often happen in contact sports. The disease cannot be formally diagnosed until an autopsy of a potential victim of CTE.