Ivy League graduate Julia Hyman, 27, was killed in New York Monday after a mix-up by the shooter led him to the wrong elevator.
Shane Tamura intended to target NFL offices inside the skyscraper at 345 Park Avenue in Manhattan but took a wrong turn and wound up on totally the wrong floor.
Hyman, a Manhattan native, graduated from the school of hotel administration at Cornell University in 2020. She joined Rudin Management as an associate in November 2024, according to her LinkedIn.
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The 27-year-old had been working at Rudin for less than nine months when the shooting broke out.
“The Rudin family and everyone at our company are devastated by yesterday’s senseless tragedy,” a Rudin representative said in a statement Tuesday.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with those injured and lost last night, including our cherished Rudin colleague, a brave New York City police officer, a beloved lobby security guard and an employee at a tenant firm,” they added.
Tamura had reportedly set out to target the NFL headquarters but accidentally rode up to the 33rd floor of Rubin Management’s building, where he encountered Hyman.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams confirmed that a “preliminary investigation” showed that the gunman had taken “the wrong elevator bank up to the NFL headquarters.”
“Instead, it took him to Rudin Management, and that is where he carried out additional shootings and took the lives of additional employees,” he said.
Cornell University President Michael I. Kotlikoff mourned the death of Hyman, whose sister also attended the university.
“We are [devastated] for Julia’s friends and family, including her parents and sister Ali,” the statement read.
Kotlikoff added that Hyman was recently on Cornell’s campus for her class’s five-year reunion earlier this summer.
Hyman graduated from the Ivy League summa cum laude with a major in hotel and restaurant administration and a minor in real estate.
Jewish groups also paid tribute to Hyman on social media. The podcast network Living Lchaim posted on X Tuesday that it was mourning “a proud young Jewish woman.”
“We honor her light, her Jewish pride, and the beautiful life she was creating. May her memory be a blessing and an inspiration to live with the same courage and heart she did,” the post read.
Tamura, who traveled from Las Vegas to carry out the shooting, was later found with a three-page note in which he claimed that he was suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) due to his days playing high school football. He apprently blamed the NFL for failing to protect players from brain injury.
CTE is a brain injury caused by repeated head trauma.
Tamura’s football coach, Walter Roby, told The New York Post Tuesday that the worst injury he can remember Tamura receiving while playing football at his Southern California high school was an ankle injury that “might have kept him out of one game.”
Despite never going on to play professional football, Tamura still called out the NFL for his alleged condition in his note, writing that “you can’t go against the NFL, they’ll squash you.”
The other victims of the shooting were security officer Aland Etienne, off-duty New York Police Department officer Didarul Islam, and Blackstone employee Wesley LePatner.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the NYPD for comment.
