The widow of Didarul Islam, the detective who was fatally shot when a gunman opened fire in a Midtown Manhattan office building this summer, has sued the building and several of its tenants, accusing them of lax security that allowed the shooting.
Detective Islam’s widow, Jamila Akhter, filed a lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court on Monday against the Rudin Management real estate firm, which owns and operates the skyscraper at 345 Park Avenue and has offices there.
The suit also names as defendants McLane Security, the security company used by the building, and the National Football League, the gunman’s apparent target, which is based there.
Efforts to reach Rudin, the security company and the league were not immediately successful.
The filing comes nearly six months after the gunman, Shane Tamura, strode into the building and sprayed bullets across the lobby and then an upper floor, killing four people before shooting himself. Detective Islam, 36, was the first to die in the gunfire.
“Not a single security measure — physical barriers, weapon detection systems, cameras, or human surveillance — deterred, detected, disrupted or delayed the gunman’s unimpeded path from the street, up steps and across the plaza to the lobby doors,” the suit says. “With total impunity, the assailant breached the entrance and began spraying the lobby with gunfire, shooting decedent four times, including three shots in his back and once in the arm.”
The lawsuit this week accuses the defendants of recklessness and negligence in failing to stop Mr. Tamura. In the filing, Ms. Akhter claims that Rudin and the building lacked sufficient weapon detection and failed to identify or intercept Mr. Tamura as he walked across the plaza with his weapon openly visible.
The building also lacked a cohesive notification system, the filing says, and failed to provide security guards and New York Police Department officers working on paid detail, like Detective Islam, with compatible devices to communicate. The suit also notes the “compounding systemic failures” that allowed Mr. Tamura to take the elevator to the building’s 33rd floor, where he went on to kill his fourth victim.
In addition to the claims against Rudin, the lawsuit accuses McLane, the security company, of not having enough adequately trained staff on duty to deter or delay the shooting. One of the company’s security guards, Aland Etienne, was among those shot dead.
The lawsuit also names as a defendant the N.F.L., which appeared to be Mr. Tamura’s target. Mr. Tamura, who had driven from Las Vegas, had been struggling for years with his mental health. He was convinced that the N.F.L. was to blame for his chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease linked to repeated head injuries.
The lawsuit on Monday accused the organization of failing to report threats of violence to the building and of not putting safety protocols in place when they “knew or should have known” that threats of violence from former N.F.L. players or those suffering from C.T.E. were possible.
Detective Islam was assigned to a Bronx precinct and was one of two officers working a paid security detail at 345 Park Avenue.
He was an immigrant from Bangladesh and a three-and-a-half-year veteran of the Police Department, and his death shined a light on the growing number of Bangladeshi Americans who have joined the police force in recent years.
He had been at the building as part of a program created in 1998 to allow uniformed officers to work as security guards while off duty. Companies can hire officers for shifts in lobbies, stores, sports complexes, banks and other venues open to the public. The Police Department vets the businesses, which provide direct payments to the officers. The department takes a 10 percent administrative fee.
Ms. Akhter, the administrator of her husband’s estate, is a mother of three. She was pregnant with the couple’s third child when her husband was killed.
Maia Coleman is a reporter for The Times covering the New York Police Department and criminal justice in the New York area.
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