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Two men who were seriously injured in a fatal shooting at a Queens hotel have filed suit against the city for failing to shutter the problem-plagued boarding house after months of pleas and warnings from locals that someone could get killed there, The Post has learned.
Shamel Bennett and Rukeem Cummings — who attended a 2021 New Year’s bash at the notorious Umbrella Hotel — are seeking $5 million in damages in their Queens Supreme Court lawsuit accusing the city of negligence.
The suit, which also names “The Office of Former Mayor Bill de Blasio” and hotel operators as defendants, notes that it was only after the triple shooting that the then-mayor finally ordered city agencies to close the hotel.
“Due to their inexcusable lack of urgency, they put this community and specifically my clients in danger,” said the plaintiffs’ attorney Ellie Silverman, calling the city’s response “too little and too late” in the filing.
The Umbrella Hotel in Kew Gardens had been the subject of complaints from neighboring residents, the local community board and elected officials months prior to the shooting, including over allegations that it was a hotbed for drug dealing, sex trafficking and violence.
Bennett and Cummings survived the shooting with serious injuries while another man, 20-year-old Robert Williams, was killed in what marked the first homicide reported in 2021. Richard Swygert, of the Bronx, faces murder and attempted murder charges in the case.
Cummings, then 20, was shot in the right leg and shattered glass entered his eye while he was waiting in a car outside the hotel.
“Fifteen percent glass is still in my eye,” he said in a sworn interview, obtained by The Post, after filing the notice of claim against the city. “They had to do surgery and take the glass out.”
Bennett, then 40, was shot in his left shoulder and required surgery. He said in testimony that “The bullet is still there.”
“I couldn’t do the MRI because the steel was still in my arm,” he said.
Both complained about a delayed response before they transported to Bellevue Hospital, claiming authorities were more concerned with grilling them about the crime than getting them medical attention for their injuries.
“For months and months, the City of New York failed this Kew Gardens community,” said Silverman. “The City of New York exhibited a wanton and flagrant disregard for the safety and well-being of this community by ignoring their pleas for the City to shut down the hotel and by refusing to convene a multi-agency response or at the very least, accept their invitations to attend Town Hall meetings.”
The Big Apple “had the duty to take immediate steps to shut down the hotel long before this incident,” the attorney added.
“By failing to take the appropriate security measures to protect against foreseeable acts of violence, their egregious delays led to this insurmountable tragedy on New Year’s Eve.”
State Assemblyman Dan Rosenthal, who represents the Kew Gardens community, said he wasn’t surprised by the lawsuit.
“For months, we reached out to City Hall to act on the Umbrella hotel. It fell on deaf fears,” Rosenthal said Sunday.
“We knew there was growing violence at the site and we knew inevitably what would happen.”
The community became alarmed when the hotel’s revolving door windows were shattered in a drive-by shooting in the summer of 2020.
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Rosenthal co-signed a letter that Queens elected officials sent to de Blasio on August 14, 2020 — four months before the New Year’s shooting — warning about violence and lawbreaking in and around the hotel and urging a coordinated city response.
The letter, sent by Rep. Grace Meng, state Sen. Leroy Comrie, then-Councilwoman Karen Koslowitz and Assembly members Rosenthal and Dan Hevesi, is mentioned as evidence in the lawsuit.
“How many pleas, petitions, calls, emails, letters, NY representatives, Town Hall meeting invitations, requests and prayers for a response does the City of New York need from a community before taking necessary and immediate action to avoid a foreseeable and preventable tragedy?” said Silverman.
The NYPD’s 102nd Precinct had stationed a patrol outside the hotel in response to the complaints — but sources said police weren’t there when the shooting occurred on New Year’s.
The front of the building at 124-18 Queens Boulevard — which also include floors with apartments — is now boarded up.
The suit also names the Umbrella Hotel and Forge Realty, which owned and operated the premises, as defendants. Forge Realty recently filed for bankruptcy protection in US Eastern District Court, records show.
The city law department and Forge Realty, through its bankruptcy lawyer, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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