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The heartbroken parents of a young real estate worker killed in last year’s mass shooting at a Park Avenue building filed suit against the owners of the Midtown tower Tuesday, blaming security failures for their daughter’s tragic death.
Craig and Nanci Hyman said a glaring “failure to provide and maintain effective security” contributed to the death of their daughter Julia Hyman, the 27-year-old Cornell University graduate slain the a sicko gunman who stormed 345 Park Ave. on July 28, 2025.
“Julia’s pain, suffering, and death were preventable,” claims the wrongful-death lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court. “The mere existence of security personnel or security procedures was not enough. Those measures had to work.”
The suit names Rudin Management, the owner of the 44-story skyscraper, as well as security companies employed to keep occupants safe, as being at fault for Hyman’s death for failing to protect the building from violent threats.
Alleged security breakdowns detailed in the filing include a lack of a system to communicate with occupants about ongoing emergencies — and a failure to lock down the elevator systems as the shooter was moving through the building.
opened fire as he exited an elevator on the 33rd floor, would have been saved if the building had proper lockdown measures that prevented the gunman from making it that far into the Park Avenue tower, the lawsuit claims.
Gunman Shane Tamura, who drove from his Las Vegas, Nevada, home to Manhattan and walked across the building’s outdoor plaza brandishing an AR-15-style rifle, was intending to target the headquarters of the National Football League on the fifth floor.
But he got in the wrong elevator and wound up on the 33rd floor — where Rudin had their management offices and where Hyman worked as an associate.
“Julia’s death was not simply the result of a lone gunman’s actions,” the suit claims. “It was also the culmination of myriad security failures that allowed an armed assailant to move through a major office building in midtown Manhattan, shoot occupants, access an elevator, reach the 33rd floor, and kill a young woman.”
Tamura also killed 43-year-old Wesley LePatner, the CEO of a Blackstone real estate investment fund, and Aland Etienne, 46, a security guard at the high-rise, and NYPD Det. Didarul Islam, 36.
“Julia went to work that day with every expectation that the people responsible for the building’s security had taken reasonable steps to protect her,” said Benedict Morelli, founding partner of Morelli Law Firm, who is representing Hyman’s parents.
“We believe failures in the building’s security and emergency response contributed to this tragedy, and Julia’s family deserves answers and accountability.”
Hyman’s family are also considering suing the city for millions, claiming that Islam “utterly and completely failed to identify an obvious impending security threat and took no actions whatsoever to thwart or mitigate said threat,” according to a court filing last summer.
A judge recently gave the Hyman family, and another victim who was wounded in the shooting, the green light to proceed with their lawsuits against the city, but neither has filed a new suit as of Tuesday.
