How Office Furniture Shielded Employees During New York Shooting

At least five people, including a police officer and a suspected gunman, were dead following a shooting at a skyscraper in central Manhattan in New York on Monday. The incident began around 6:00 pm (local time) when reports of gunfire alerted hundreds of police to a busy office district on the storied Park Avenue--an area popular with tourists and visiting businesspeople.

The US media reported that the suspected shooter, so far identified as 27-year-old Shane Tamura from Las Vegas, first exchanged fire with a New York Police Department officer in the lobby of 345 Park Avenue at around 6:40 pm. He then went up to the 33rd floor of the building, before barricading himself inside the office tower, possibly on the 32nd floor.

Terrifying photos emerged on social media showing employees working inside 345 Park Avenue barricading their office doors with furniture as the gunman was rampaging through the building. 

This is how the employees in the Blackstone building barricaded themselves inside their offices while the shooter was active. pic.twitter.com/M7pMyWP9zJ

— Spencer Hakimian (@SpencerHakimian) July 29, 2025

Workers in business attire can be seen piling sofas and desks up against their office door, with the towering furniture reaching the ceiling. The photos making the rounds online have not yet been independently verified by NDTV. 

BREAKING: Photo from inside the Blackstone office pic.twitter.com/8DeVVbX5CD

— Exec Sum (@exec_sum) July 29, 2025

Police said the scene, an office tower block at 345 Park Avenue home to hedge fund giant Blackstone, auditor KPMG and the National Football League, had been "contained and the lone shooter is dead," without providing details about the identity of the suspect.

Police said the shooter allowed a woman to exit the elevator and walk past him unharmed before he died.

The cop killed in the shooting was identified as a 36-year-old, Didarul Islam, an immigrant from Bangladesh. The officer was a three-and-a-half-year veteran of the department, according to New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

"He loved this city and everyone we spoke with stated he was a person of faith and a person that believed in God and believed in living out the life of a godly person," Adams said.

Eyewitness Account

Eyewitnesses described a gunman going floor to floor as staff prepared to leave for the day. Office worker Shad Sakib told news agency AFP that he was packing his things to leave work when a public address announcement warned him and his colleagues to shelter in place.

"Everyone was confused with like, 'wait, what's going on?' And then someone finally realised that it's online, that someone walked in with a machine gun," said the witness who wore a grey suit jacket.

"He walked right into a building next door. We saw the photo of him walking through the same area that I walked through to get lunch here. You would think it won't happen to you, and then it does," he added.

Another witness, a woman who declined to give her name as she left the vicinity of the shooting, told AFP, "I was in the building. He went floor by floor," while a second woman wept as she left the scene. 

The frontrunner in the race for mayor, Zohran Mamdani, wrote on X that he was "heartbroken to learn of the horrific shooting in midtown and I am holding the victims, their families, and the NYPD officer... in my thoughts."