After a mass shooting on July 28, 2025, in New York’s Midtown Manhattan left five people dead, including the shooter, St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church put up signs around its building offering support and pastoral care to the community. The church is located across the street from 345 Park Avenue, where the shooting occurred. Photo: Peter Thompson
[Episcopal News Service] St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church is offering pastoral support to the community after a July 28 mass shooting took place across the street and left five people dead, including the shooter, and five others injured in Midtown Manhattan.
“Everybody at St. Bart’s is OK, but people are shaken up and in shock,” the Rev. Peter Thompson, St. Bart’s interim rector and vicar, told Episcopal News Service. “I think it’s very difficult to see your house of worship – your safe place – be so close to an act of violence like this. It can feel violating and shattering even if you weren’t anywhere close to the shooting on Monday night.”
Shortly before 6:30 p.m. local time, Shane Devon Tamura of Las Vegas, Nevada, entered 345 Park Avenue with an AR-15-style rifle and wearing body armor. The skyscraper serves as the headquarters for several businesses, including The Blackstone Group and the National Football League, more commonly referred to as the NFL. Tamura first fatally shot Didarul Islam, a New York Police officer from Bangladesh, and another woman before firing on the lobby and shooting two more people standing at the elevators. He then went up to the 33rd floor and shot Julia Hyman, a Rudin Management employee, before barricading himself and then shooting himself in the chest.
Tamura is believed to have targeted the NFL’s office but entered the wrong set of elevators. In his suicide note, Tamura blamed the NFL for causing him chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a degenerative brain disease that commonly develops from participating in contact sports. Evidence of CTE, however, can only be detected during an autopsy. Tamura played varsity football in high school.
St. Bart’s had closed earlier in the afternoon, but members of the nonprofit Coalition for the Homeless were cleaning up after serving meals on the East 51st Street side of the church and had to shelter in place inside. On the East 50th Street side, diners and staff at Inside Park, a restaurant based at St. Bart’s, also sheltered inside the church.
“St. Bart’s congregation feels that this is a pretty safe area. On the other hand, we’re blocks from St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the Rockefeller Center,” Thompson said. “We’re also blocks from Grand Central Station and the United Nations, so we’re used to heavy security presence and we’re always aware that there are targets around us.”
As of July 30, 253 mass shootings have occurred nationwide in 2025, according to the Gun Violence Archive, an American nonprofit that catalogs every gun-related death in the United States. A mass shooting is defined as one in which at four people are shot, either fatally or non-fatally, excluding the shooter.
The church has been in touch with the New York Police Department and clergy are available for pastoral support. Beginning July 30, signs saying, “We are here for you in this difficult time,” and inviting the community to speak with clergy in person or via email have been posted near St. Bart’s.
Thompson said St. Bart’s is working with nearby places of worship to schedule an interfaith vigil. No official date, time or location has been scheduled, but Thompson said it’s “almost certainly” going to take place sometime the evening of Aug. 4.
On the same day as the shooting, a funeral took place at St. Bart’s. While he was at the cemetery for the burial service, Thompson said he reflected on “how true it is that life is short, and we never know what will come next.”
“The readings assigned for this Sunday [Aug. 3] are about the fragility of life, and I feel that it’s important for me to acknowledge in my sermon that we all witnessed that on Monday,” Thompson said. “We reflect on how we live our lives going forward, recognizing the beautiful gift of life that we have right now, a gift that is also fragile.”
-Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.