The youngest victim of Monday’s shooting rampage in a Midtown skyscraper was a rising star — who was executed while working late.
Julia Hyman, 27, was one of the last people still working on the 33rd floor of 345 Park Ave. about 6:30 p.m. when madman Shane Tamura, also 27, burst from the elevator and started blasting with an assault rifle.
Hyman – a dean’s list graduate of Cornell University – had just started working as an associate at the building’s owner, Rudin Management, in November. Loved ones said it was just like her to be burning the midnight oil at the prestigious gig.
“She was a hard worker. That’s what they said,” 62-year-old Siva Subramaniam, the father of Julia’s best friend from college, told The Post at her funeral on Wednesday.
“She was first in, last out,” he added.
Hyman was one of just three people Tamura encountered on the 33rd floor. The first was a longtime building maid who miraculously managed to escape as he fired his weapon after her, the second was another employee who fled into a fortified panic room.
Then he found Hyman near a desk, and gunned her down.
Evidently, with nobody left to murder, Tamura – who’d killed three other people in the building lobby — then turned the gun on himself.
Police said the only thing to be thankful for was that Tamura didn’t show up sooner, when the office was still full.
How the shooting unfolded
- Reports of the shooting at 345 Park Ave. start coming in around 6:28 p.m.
- Shane Tamura, 27, is seen getting out of a black BMW between 51st and 52nd streets with an M4 rifle.
- He enters the lobby and turns right, where he shoots police officer Didarul Islam, 36, dead.
- Tamura guns down a woman cowering behind a pillar in the lobby, sprays more bullets and walks toward the elevator bank — where he shoots dead a security guard crouching at his desk.
- One more man reports being shot and injured in the lobby. He was in critical but stable condition.
- The gunman allows a woman to walk out of the elevators unharmed before heading up to the 33rd floor, where building owner Rudin Properties’ offices are located, “and begins to walk the floor, firing as he traveled.”
- One woman is shot and killed on that floor before Tamura shoots himself in the chest.
- It’s unclear how long the mayhem lasted. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch posted on X at 7:52 p.m.: “The scene has been contained and the lone shooter has been neutralized.”
“Thank God this didn’t happen a half-hour earlier. There were minimal people,” NYPD Chief of Department John Chell told Fox News.
“The sheer terror,” Chell said. “The crime scene, the video, in three decades of doing this, was just horrible.”
Others who worked with Hyman said they also weren’t surprised she was putting in extra hours – recalling her as a natural leader, whose energy and attention extended even to the lowest members of the corporate totem pole.
“She was my friend’s mentor and I met her one time in the hallway where we talked briefly,” said a Rudin summer intern, who left the building just 40 minutes before the shooting started. “Other times I’d see her walking by and we would just smile at one another.”
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“That definitely says something about her, the fact that she was there working late. It meant her work meant a lot to her, and her efforts,” he added.
And the scope of Hyman’s reach was put on full display during her heart-wrenching funeral at a Manhattan synagogue Wednesday – which was so full of friends and loved ones that a second room had to be set up for overflow viewing.
“With seemingly innate emotional intelligence, Julia knew how to connect in a deep and meaningful way with those around her. Julia was truly wise beyond her age,” her uncle Rob Pittman said at the service.
“Julia knew this and lived life with wide open eyes and courage and conviction. She didn’t just go to the party. She planned it all, made the playlist and served as the DJ,” he added.
In addition to excelling at work and academically, Hyman was a leader at her Cornell sorority and the captain of her high school lacrosse team.
She grew up in the Bronx and graduated from Riverdale Country School in 2016, which she’d attended since she was a kid.
“Such a waste, such a waste,” said Subramaniam, whose daughter was also Hyman’s college roommate. “She loved life, loved food, great cook.”
Tamura’s other victims were 43-year-old Blackstone executive Wesley LePatner — a mother who was killed while hiding behind a lobby column – building security guard and father Aland Etienne and 36-year-old NYPD officer Didarul Silam, who was a father and husband to a pregnant wife.
Hyman’s uncle encouraged her parents and friends to look around her funeral and take in the sight of how many people she’d touched.
“Absorb how many lives your little girl managed to impact and the remarkable person she turned out to be,” Pittman said.
“Julia got exactly what she needed from you, and she really did come out perfect.”
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