While juggling the balance of a busy home life and a corporate job, NYC shooting victim Wesley LePatner was adamant about getting home in time to spend evenings with her husband Evan and their kids.
“That was nonnegotiable,” a longtime colleague said.
It was, then, shocking to friends and family that Lepatner, a Blackstone investment executive, was among the first people shot to death when a gunman stormed a Manhattan office tower on Park Ave. Monday evening and opened fire in the lobby and an upper floor, killing four people.
“How many of us thought that surely Wesley was safe,” the colleague said Thursday at a crowded funeral for the LePatner, 43.
“She was never in the office at 6:30. She was with her kids. Always.”
Friends, family and co-workers filled Manhattan’s Central Synagogue on E. 55th St., Thursday where they traded stories about how LePatner mixed her professional drive with a personal touch highlighted by care and compassion.
The 5-foot tall dynamo — friends said she insisted she was 5-feet-1 — was a giant among her peers, who said LePatner always saw the best in everyone.
”She led with her mind and heart,” said Chris Lee, a former colleague at Goldman Sachs, where LePatner got her start. “She didn’t just show up for you. She lifted you. She wasn’t just on your team. She was your biggest fan.”
Lee, president of KKR’s global real estate business in Manhattan, recalled how his friend struggled with her decision when she got an offer to move to Blackstone.
“She wasn’t sure, talking about work-life balance,” Lee said. “It was one of those aggressive pep talks that people have with each other. I said, ‘If you don’t accept this job by Friday, I’m calling Evan.’ It’s great to have someone you can have a relationship like that with.”
Lee said that he and LePatner were brutally honest with each other.
“She was more than a friend. She was a blessing,” Lee said to LePatner’s children.
“Your mother’s an angel. You know that. And so does everyone in this room. She’s with us right now, smiling proud, rooting for us, maybe critiquing our speeches, but loving us.”
Rabbi Benjamin Goldschmidt said LePatner, a Yale University graduate, lifted everyone around her, and set an example for women — and men— in the workplace.
“In order to empower others you need to possess power yourself,” Goldschmidt said. “Wesley knew she was a rock star.”
LePatner was a graduate of Horace Mann High School who met her husband on their first day at Yale University, according to their wedding announcement in the New York Times.
She served on the boards of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Abraham Joshua Heschel School, the UJA-Federation of New York and the Yale University Library Council. She was also a trustee of the all-girls Hewitt School on the Upper East Side.
A day earlier, mourners filled the same synagogue for Julia Hyman’s rites. LePatner, a personal friend of Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, and Hyman, 27, a Cornell graduate who worked as an associate for Rudin Management, were killed along with security guard Aland Etienne and NYPD Officer Didarul Islam.
Hyman was the first victim laid to rest in the days after gunman Shane Tamara, 27, stormed the Park Ave. skyscraper, killed four people, and took his own life.
Islam, whose funeral was also held Thursday, was working a paid security detail at the East Midtown office building on his day off when Tamura, who was openly carrying an assault weapon, walked into the lobby and opened fire in what has become New York City’s deadliest shooting in decades.
“We are experiencing an enormous, gaping hole in our hearts that will never be filled,” LePatner’s family said in a statement. “Yet we will carry on the remarkable legacy Wesley created.”
Originally Published: July 31, 2025 at 3:59 PM EDT
