New York gunman was flagged by security camera system before attack, sources say
A still frame of CCTV footage obtained by Reuters and timestamped 6:26:52 p.m. ET – just over a minute before police received the first emergency call about the mass shooting - shows a man holding an assault-style rifle at his side. A computer-generated bright yellow box around him in the image indicates the use of software that analyzes live video feeds for threats requiring instant action, the former federal officials said.
The details about the system, which have not previously been reported, raise questions about whether the gunman could have been thwarted before his attack, the officials said. Rudin Management, the real estate company that owns the tower, declined to comment on the camera system and whether it prompted any immediate actions from security staff.
Police have identified the shooter as Shane Tamura, 27, a Las Vegas resident with a history of mental illness. He killed two security officers, including a police officer working on a paid security detail, a Rudin employee and an investment firm executive before taking his own life.
The yellow box surrounding the shooter as he walked toward the entrance was meant to alert guards at the front security desk, the former officials said.
Michael Dorn, executive director of Safe Havens International, which advises schools on how to protect themselves from active shooters, said that even with such a video system in place, the threat still needs to be relayed to the building's occupants immediately by the security staff.
'You can't automate this away,' said Dorn, a former anti-terrorism adviser to the Georgia Department of Homeland Security and an expert on mass casualty events.
Experts said some systems allow security guards to initiate an immediate lockdown of external doors, elevators and other access points.
Matthew Dumpert, global leader of enterprise security risk management at financial and risk advisory firm Kroll, said the attack - the city's deadliest mass shooting in decades - prompted clients to call with questions about how to protect themselves from similar attacks. The reaction is reminiscent of the aftermath of the killing in December of United Healthcare executive Brian Thompson in Manhattan, when several companies enhanced executive protection in response.
'It takes significant resources, alarms to notify people, training to recognize it, physical security elements like locks to lock down facilities and prevent somebody from having free flow access through a facility,' Dumpert said.
Glen Kucera, president of Allied Universal, a global security firm, also was fielding calls from clients on Tuesday.
'The only way to have avoided this was to keep the shooter outside, which is very difficult,' Kucera said, adding it was clear the gunman intended to cause harm and not survive the encounter, which made him the most difficult kind of the threat to stop.
The security systems at 345 Park Avenue were typical of high-end offices in New York, according to Dave Komendat, senior security advisor at the risk mitigation firm International SOS.
While the lobby is open to the public, as in most buildings, visitors check in at security desks to access the elevators, which are behind turnstiles. Rudin's offices, where the gunman killed himself, has bathrooms that doubled as bulletproof safe rooms, likely saving lives, Mayor Eric Adams said.
Numerous companies have implemented enhanced security for the rest of the week following the shooting, including additional guards, according to the Partnership for New York City, which represents more than 300 banks, investment firms and other companies in the city. - Reuters
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'This is a message that you may end up with a very random outcome that you're going to like a lot less than if you elect to leave under your own steam,' said Michelle Mittelstadt, communications director for the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute. Internal U.S. immigration enforcement guidance issued in July said migrants could be deported to countries that had not provided diplomatic assurances of their safety in as little as six hours. While the administration has highlighted the deportations of convicted criminals to African countries, it has also sent asylum-seeking Afghans, Russians and others to Panama and Costa Rica. The Trump administration deported more than 200 Venezuelans accused of being gang members to El Salvador in March, where they were held in the country's CECOT prison without access to attorneys until they were released in a prisoner swap last month. More than 5,700 non-Mexican migrants have been deported to Mexico since Trump took office, according to Mexican government data, continuing a policy that began under former President Joe Biden. The fact that one Mexican man was deported to South Sudan and another threatened with deportation to Libya suggests that the Trump administration did not try to send them to their home countries, according to Trina Realmuto, executive director at the pro-immigrant National Immigration Litigation Alliance. 'Mexico historically accepts back its own citizens,' said Realmuto, one of the attorneys representing migrants in the lawsuit contesting third-country deportations. The eight men deported to South Sudan included Mexican national Jesus Munoz Gutierrez, who had served a sentence in the U.S. for second-degree murder and was directly taken into federal immigration custody afterward, according to Realmuto. Court records show Munoz stabbed and killed a roommate during a fight in 2004. When the Trump administration first initiated the deportation in late May, Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum said her government had not been informed. 'If he does want to be repatriated, then the United States would have to bring him to Mexico,' Sheinbaum said at the time. His sister, Guadalupe Gutierrez, said in an interview that she didn't understand why he was sent to South Sudan, where he is currently in custody. She said Mexico is trying to get her brother home. 'Mexico never rejected my brother,' Gutierrez said. 'USING US AS A PAWN' Immigration hardliners see the third-country removals as a way to deal with immigration offenders who can't easily be deported and could pose a threat to the U.S. public. 'The Trump administration is prioritizing the safety of American communities over the comfort of these deportees,' said Jessica Vaughan, policy director at the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports lower levels of immigration. The Trump administration in July to take migrants and the Pacific Islands nation of Palau, among others. Under U.S. law, federal immigration officials can deport someone to a country other than their place of citizenship when all other efforts are 'impracticable, inadvisable or impossible.' Immigration officials must first try to send an immigrant back to their home country, and if they fail, then to a country with which they have a connection, such as where they lived or were born. For a Lao man who was almost deported to Libya in early May, hearing about the renewed third-country deportations took him back to his own close call. In an interview from Laos granted on condition of anonymity because of fears for his safety, he asked why the U.S. was 'using us as a pawn?' His attorney said the man had served a prison sentence for a felony. Reuters could not establish what he was convicted of. He recalled officials telling him to sign his deportation order to Libya, which he refused, telling them he wanted to be sent to Laos instead. They told him he would be deported to Libya regardless of whether he signed or not, he said. DHS did not comment on the allegations. The man, who came to the United States in the early 1980s as a refugee when he was four years old, said he was now trying to learn the Lao language and adapt to his new life, 'taking it day by day.' - Reuters
