Top Blackstone Real Estate Executive Among Those Killed in Manhattan Shooting

Police swarmed Midtown Manhattan after a gunman entered a New York office building. (CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images)

Wesley LePatner, a prominent financial executive who rose to run a flagship real estate fund at Blackstone , was among those killed by a gunman in New York City on Monday evening.

LePatner and police officer Didarul Islam were among five killed in the attack, including the shooter, who died after turning the gun on himself, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said at a press conference late Monday. A sixth person was in critical condition.

The man entered a skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan with a rifle. The 44-story building, located at 345 Park Avenue, houses groups including Blackstone, the National Football League, and the professional services firm KPMG.

Wesley LePatner in 2017 attending the American Ballet Theatre Spring Gala at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. Photo: Kelly Taub/BFA/Shutterstock

In a statement on Tuesday morning, a spokesman for Blackstone said the firm is “heartbroken.”

“Words cannot express the devastation we feel,” the spokesman said. “Wesley was a beloved member of the Blackstone family and will be sorely missed. She was brilliant, passionate, warm, generous, and deeply respected within our firm and beyond.”

LePatner was the firm’s global head of Core+ Real Estate and was named chief executive officer of Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust last year.

The fund, known as BREIT, itself is well-known in the investment industry for offering individuals access to real estate assets, and LePatner was seen by colleagues as a rising star. Blackstone is the world’s largest manager of private assets, such as real estate, private equity, and private credit.

A Yale University graduate who joined Blackstone in 2014, LePatner was a face of the firm’s real estate arm and shared her work on social media.

LePatner said in a post on LinkedIn this past spring that she was grateful to Blackstone for hosting events for Take Your Kids to Work Day, “giving my son and others in the next generation the opportunity to learn about the amazing work happening at 345 Park.”

“Accompanying my own parents to their offices back in the ’90s is a core memory of mine—watching them seamlessly balance demanding professional careers with our family life was truly inspiring and showed me that anything is possible with dedication and determination,” LePatner wrote.

She was deeply involved with New York institutions. In February, the Metropolitan Museum of Art appointed LePatner to its board, where she joined the former longtime Blackstone executive Tony James. She also sat on the boards of the UJA-Federation of New York and the Abraham Joshua Heschel School in Manhattan.

“She embodied the best of Blackstone,” the Blackstone spokesman said on Tuesday. “Our prayers are with her husband, children and family. We are also saddened by the loss of the other innocent victims as well, including brave security personnel and NYPD.”

Before joining Blackstone, LePatner was an executive at Goldman Sachs , where she worked for more than a decade. She was a managing director focused on real estate in the bank’s asset management arm.

The shooting on Monday was a rare instance of mass gun violence in New York City. The city’s police department said last month that between January and May this year, the city experienced “the lowest number of shootings and murders in recorded history,” and that May marked the eighth straight month of declines in major crime categories.

Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said during a press conference on Monday, where she stood alongside Adams, that the shooter was believed to be a man named Shane Tamura.

He lived in Las Vegas and drove across the country to New York, Tisch said. She said four other victims were being treated for minor injuries.

“I want to be very clear,” Tisch said, “we believe this to be a lone shooter and there is no longer an active threat to the public.”

The building is located near the hotel where Brian Thompson, the late UnitedHealthcare executive, was shot last December.

Write to Rebecca Ungarino at rebecca.ungarino@barrons.com, Brian Swint at brian.swint@barrons.com and George Glover at george.glover@dowjones.com