Here’s what we know from the released body camera footage, 911 calls and police documents:
In September 2022, Tamura’s mother, overwhelmed with fear, called 911 from her car outside a Las Vegas motel. Inside, her then-24-year-old son was threatening to take his own life.
She wasn’t sure if he was armed but knew he owned a handgun and carried a backpack with a holster, she told the dispatcher.
“I was just inside the apartment with him, and he just started crying and, like, slamming things,” she said. Tamura had told her he “just can’t take it anymore.”
Too scared to leave but equally afraid to stay because Tamura told her she was making things worse, the mother hid in her car, hoping he wouldn’t see her.
Tamura suffered from depression, insomnia, migraines and lingering symptoms from a concussion from a sports injury, his mother said.
Las Vegas police responded, filing an emergency petition to commit Tamura to a mental health facility.
Following the shooting in New York, investigators found a suicide note on Tamura in which he claimed he suffered from CTE, a source said. The brain disease is linked to head trauma, like concussions.
Tamura, a celebrated high school football star, expressed grievances with the NFL in his note and asked for his brain to be studied for signs of CTE, the source said.
Two years after the first mental health commitment, in August 2024, police were called to his apartment again after a similar plea from his mother. She reported Tamura had called her crying and expressing suicidal thoughts, according to police logs.
“He was just crying and said, ‘I’m not going to be able to go any further,’” his mother told a dispatcher.
He struggled with several behavioral issues, including bipolar disorder, anxiety and depression, the mother said.
When an officer arrived at the apartment, medical responders who were already there said Tamura had been “calm and cooperative with us.”
At one point, Tamura pointed to a backpack he said contained a gun and the officer told him, “Don’t touch it – don’t go near it,” the bodycam video shows.
Tamura was again committed to a mental health facility for treatment.
Without further details on the psychiatric holds, it’s unclear whether they would have shown up in background checks and prevented Tamura from purchasing weapons, CNN previously reported.
“If you were on a 48-hour hold, if you were released at the end of that, it would not affect your ability to possess firearms under federal law,” Thomas Chittum, former associate deputy director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said.
