Nate Burleson: Top of the hour with a shooting in Midtown Manhattan that shattered the busy rush hour commute. Police say a gunman walked right into an office tower yesterday just before 6:30 p.m. and started shooting.
You can see him here carrying a military style rifle. Police say he did have a history of mental illness among the four people dead. NYPD Officer Didarul Islam, an immigrant from Bangladesh who had a wife and two children and also one on the way. Joining us now is New York City Mayor Eric Adams who is going to help us unpack all this. Thank you for joining us. Good morning.
Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you for having me. Thank you for acknowledging the loss of our officer as well as other civilians who were murdered during this encounter.
Burleson: Mayor Adams, do we know anything more about the suspect? And we also heard that he had a note on him. Do you know the context of said note if that is indeed true?
Mayor Adams: Yes, he did have a note on him. The note alluded to that he felt he had CTE, a known brain injury injury for those who participate in contact sports. He appeared to have blamed the NFL for his injury.
The NFL headquarters is located in the building at 345 Park Avenue. He, from our preliminary investigation, he took 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.
Vladimir Duthiers: Mayor, that is some crucial detail there for us. I also want to take this time now to ask you about Officer Didarul Islam. You know, this is a 36-year-old NYPD officer. He was an immigrant to this country. He was killed by the gunman. He had two sons, he and his wife were expecting a third. What can you tell us about the meeting that you had with his family and how are they doing this morning?
Mayor Adams: A very painful moment. As you could expect, he was a proud member of the Bangladeshi community as well as a proud member of the NYPD. He wanted to leave a legacy and it was part of our overall recruitment efforts, particularly for Muslim officers. After September 11th, there were so many fine young men and women who wanted to be a part of our public safety apparatus.
It's something that I participated in the recruitment of when I was with the department in 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care. As you stated, two children, one on the way, this was his dad's only son and you could only imagine the level of pain that he has experienced seeing his son die in this manner. But he has a proud family. He was a devoted person to his faith and to the City of New York. And we lost a fine young man through this senseless act of violence.
And this gun came into our city from Las Vegas. The individual drove across country to come here and it just makes our challenge what we have done in the city about removing illegal guns off the streets. We have strong gun laws here, but many of our neighboring states have lax gun laws. This person appears to have had a concealed permit even with his mental health challenges.
Adriana Diaz: Mayor, thank you for telling us about that meeting that you had with officer Islam's family. We are praying for them. We also want to know more about the other victims. What can you tell us, mayor?
Mayor Adams: There were employees. One person who was shot was security personnel. He is in critical condition at this time. The perpetrator shot an innocent woman in the lobby area and then he walked towards the counter where there was a security guard. If he was able to get to the button, he could have froze the elevator. But he was assassinated behind the counter as he attempted to hide himself behind the counter. He was killed as well.
And the suspect then took the elevator upstairs and which is really uncanny, uncanny episode. [He] allowed a woman who exit the elevator to walk past him without discharging his gun. But then he went on to the floor of Rudin Management and proceeded to discharge multiple numbers of rounds. And the Rudin Management had a safe room on each floor, which doubled as a bathroom where you were able to lock yourself in a bulletproof door of that company. And I have to really commend them for the drills that they do for active shooters as well as different procedures in place to protect their employees. It's unfortunate that these drills have become commonplace in America. But our corporate partners have been cooperative around this.
Burleson: Mayor, you held a prominent role in the NYPD. So the question that we have is what comes next in this investigation?
Mayor Adams: We're going to look at the perpetrator's social media pages. We're going to go to his home with our partners in the federal and state law enforcement partners in Las Vegas. We're going to look at the note and determine if it's his handwriting. And so there's a thorough investigation that is going to really start putting the pieces together to go over his path on how he took the lives of innocent people. A total of six people were shot. One, of course, is the suspect.
So there are many levels. And we know that New York is shaken. So you're going to see a visible presence of the CRT team, critical response team. And you want to see even some non visible police and law enforcement protections that would be in place.
Burleson: Yeah, real quick. We have to go. Have you talked to President Trump yet?
Mayor Adams: No, we have not communicated with the White House. They did inquire. We did communicate with our federal partners here with the special agent in charge of the FBI agency here.
Burleson: Mayor Eric Adams, I know you're a busy man. So thank you for joining us.
Mayor Adams: Thank you.
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