345 Park Avenue Shooting: Remembering the Victims

Late last week, three of the four victims of the 345 Park Avenue shooting were laid to rest. Their deaths were a senseless tragedy, but their lives tell a remarkable story about what makes New York possible every day: a city where ambition, duty, dynamism, and sacrifice join in a common striving for something better.

Didarul Islam, 36, a father of two children preparing to welcome his third, immigrated from Bangladesh about 16 years ago. He settled in the Bronx’s Parkchester neighborhood, where he joined many fellow Bangladeshi immigrants. His neighbors remembered him as someone always willing to help, sending money to his family in his homeland and donating thousands of dollars to build and maintain his local mosque. He first joined the public workforce as a traffic agent and then, three and a half years ago, as an officer in the NYPD. Posthumously promoting him to detective, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch remarked that Islam had done the job of an officer with twice as much experience.

To support his growing family, Islam took a second job through the NYPD’s “paid detail” program, which allows private, vetted companies to pay for in-uniform security from off-duty officers. He frequently encouraged his fellow Bangladeshis to join the force to launch themselves into the middle class. At least 1,000 of his countrymen now serve the city in this capacity—about 3 percent of the force.

Aland Etienne, 46, was a father of two school-aged children who worked as a security officer at 345 Park Avenue for more than six years. A member of the 32BJ building workers union whom family and colleagues described as “beloved,” Etienne staffed the lobby’s security desk. Known as “Al” to the workers of 345 Park, he spoke glowingly about his children and kept up with politics in his native Haiti. Etienne delighted in film, making home movies and originally aspiring to work, like his brother, as a filmmaker before the duties of fatherhood took precedence. He wanted nothing more than to give his children “the future they deserve.”

Wesley LePatner, a 43-year-old mother of two, was a star of New York’s finance and civic institutions. A summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Yale University, LePatner rose through the ranks of finance titans Goldman Sachs and Blackstone to become senior managing director and global head of Blackstone’s Core+ real estate portfolio. She commanded rooms of executives through her force of intellect and knowledge of her unit’s business.

A mentor to many professional women in finance, LePatner sought to uplift those around her through a mix of empathy and competence, bringing out the best in others. These qualities also shone through her commitment to the city’s foremost cultural, philanthropic, and Jewish institutions— she served on the boards of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, UJA–Federation of New York, and others. She was part of a group of benefactors at Yale who committed at least $1 million to support the university.

Julia Hyman, 27, was a native New Yorker and, in true local fashion, constantly strove to do more. At Riverdale Country School, she captained the varsity soccer, swimming, and lacrosse teams, winning the school’s Founders Award. A 2020 summa cum laude graduate of Cornell University’s school of hotel administration, Hyman began working at Rudin Management, a local real-estate firm and the owner of 345 Park Avenue. The same drive that propelled her to success in athletics and academics fueled her career aspirations, earning her a reputation for putting in long hours with energy and cheer.

“Julia changed our lives. She made us better friends, better listeners, and better people,” said her friends at her funeral.

These four souls came from different countries, faiths, ethnicities, and educational backgrounds. New York brought them together to share their talents with their city and the wider world. Each worked toward the same goals: to make the most of their lives, to launch their careers upward, and to provide for their loved ones.

They worked hard—well past normal business hours—to enrich the lives of their customers, coworkers, and fellow New Yorkers. Every New Yorker is better off because of the innumerable daily efforts of people like them. The city’s rhythm emerges from millions playing their part.

That four individuals with such different life stories and career trajectories shared the same building shows how New York’s commerce joins people together in a shared striving. The city’s skyscrapers are the vertical villages where lives and fates converge every day.

Their commitment to their communities, families, and friends likewise reveals how New Yorkers juggle the demands of the workplace with the responsibility to help neighbors in need.

It’s natural to think of how their loss could have been avoided. Though averting every tragedy is impossible, public officials can mitigate risks. The assailant had been involuntarily hospitalized for mental-health issues twice in Nevada, prescribed antipsychotic medication, and flagged for buying excessive amounts of ammunition a month before the shooting. Mental-health and criminal-justice programs nationwide should do more to incapacitate individuals like him.

It’s admittedly difficult to prevent individuals who have fallen through the cracks of the system from carrying out attacks like those at 345 Park Avenue. That an assailant could get out of his car and walk across a pedestrian plaza with a rifle suggests that he didn’t encounter a police officer before entering the building. An NYPD headcount some 2,000 officers short of its budgeted target made it more likely that the assailant would go unnoticed.

The premature deaths of these four people remind us how all New Yorkers share an interest in public safety. The city can’t work unless everyone feels safe enough to put their fears aside and focus on their jobs. For all of New York’s frenzied activity, it is peace that makes it all possible. Even momentary breaches of that peace can be consequential; because of this one, seven children will forever miss a mother or father.

Detective Didarul Islam, Aland Etienne, Wesley LePatner, and Julia Hyman embodied the qualities that make New York great. A little of their city is buried with them.

Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images