An NFL employee wounded in last year’s deadly Midtown Manhattan office tower shooting is seeking $24 million from New York City, alleging in a lawsuit that a slain off-duty police detective’s failures helped give the gunman access to the building.
Craig Clementi, a finance department employee with the National Football League, suffered serious injuries when he was shot in the back by gunman Shane Tamura inside the Park Avenue skyscraper on July 28, 2025.
According to a civil complaint filed last week in Manhattan Supreme Court, Clementi claims NYPD Detective Didarul Islam did not prevent Tamura, 27, from entering the property before the attack that left Clementi wounded and four others dead, including Islam himself, the New York Daily News reported.
Islam had been stationed in uniform at 345 Park Ave. through the NYPD’s “paid detail” security program when the armed Tamura entered the office building.
“Detective Islam…failed to identify a visible impending security threat and took no action to thwart or mitigate said threat, including while the threat was in view for an extended period of time prior to the attack,” a notice of claim filed with the lawsuit says, according to the report.
The lawsuit alleges Islam had a special responsibility to protect people inside the building and breached that duty by failing to spot Tamura as he allegedly walked about 100 feet across the outdoor plaza with an M4 assault rifle visible.
It remains unclear whether Islam, who was positioned near the lobby entrance, saw the shooter before the gunfire began.
“In short, the video evidence provides a good faith basis to assert that Detective Islam’s inattentiveness and negligence allowed the gunman to walk across the building’s plaza with a visible assault rifle and into the building; all without the gunman being detected, deterred, confronted, neutralized and without building/lobby occupants being warned of the approaching danger,” the complaint argues.
Clementi “was shot in close range” in his side and lower back, around 10 feet away from Islam, the Daily News reported.
The suit alleges that despite the “grievous gunshot wound,” the NFL staffer was able to escape through the building’s shattered revolving door before locating NYPD officers nearby and calling 911.
He lay bleeding on a sidewalk before being rushed to New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, where he was put in the Intensive Care Unit and had surgery to remove bullet fragments.
Clementi suffered a lumbar fracture and was hospitalized for 10 days and required “home wound care nursing and physical therapy” after being discharged, one document in the suit states.
“I bear permanent depressed scars from the wound and I experience pain every day,” Clementi wrote in an attached filing, the outlet reported.
“Since the shooting, I have also suffered from severe psychological trauma, including multiple daily flashbacks to the incident, hypervigilance, and significant disruption to my daily life and professional activities.”
Clementi is seeking $24 million in damages from the city.
While Islam was technically off-duty from the NYPD while working as private security, the lawsuit argues that the city can be held liable in the case as his duties “remain within the City’s control.”
The program allows private companies to pay for off-duty security work by NYPD officers while in their uniforms.
Detective Islam, who lived in the Bronx and was assigned to the 47th Precinct, had served on the force for four years.
In the aftermath of the shooting, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch praised the 36-year-old off-duty cop, who was a Bangladeshi immigrant and father of three.
The family of 27-year-old Cornell University graduate Julia Hyman, who was one of the four people killed in the horrific Midtown shooting spree, also plans to sue the city for $65 million — claiming police “utterly and completely” failed to stop the crazed gunman before he stormed into the building, The Post previously reported.
While Tamura’s motive for the bloody massacre remains under investigation, it is believed that he intended to target the NFL offices before shooting himself.
In a suicide note, he made reference to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a common brain condition in football players and a post-mortem “found unambiguous diagnostic evidence” of CTE.
