The report by the security director is an exhibit in an amended complaint filed on June 17 in United States District Court by the pilot in his federal lawsuit against the owner and operator of Wyndham Grand Riverfront Hotel.

Pankul Mathur says on April 15, 2013, he was awakened at 10:40 p.m. by a loud banging on his hotel door. On a two-day layover with his crew before flying a Boeing 777 back to Delhi, Mathur answered the door only to have a tall, large, African-American woman force her way into his room and take $500 from his wallet next to the bed.

Mathur (right) followed the woman into the hallway, where they encountered a housekeeping employee, in uniform, identified in the court document as Anthony Downs. Mathur says Downs refused to help him. When the woman allegedly told Downs that she was taking the money because she was a prostitute and that Mathur had called for her but refused to pay, the hotel employee supposedly agreed that he would support her story.

What Downs was doing in the hallway is open to interpretation. He was “clocked out” and on a break at the time. Mathur says Downs was there because he was an accomplice of the robber.

“Even if the staff member was not an accomplice,” writes Mathur’s attorney, Sanjay Shivpuri (left), in the complaint, “he was stunningly careless towards a guest at the Wyndham Hotel.” The woman got away but was captured, at least, on security video arriving at the hotel at 10:39 p.m. and leaving minutes later.

Downs is also on video. Randy Herring, Wyndham’s director of security and loss management at the time, wrote in his report of the incident that Downs is seen standing outside of Mathur’s room before the robbery and then “acting suspicious by Hoyt’s entrance,” referring to the hotel’s restaurant on the first floor, “peeping around the corner and hiding in the stairway entrance opposite the elevator.”

At one point in the video, according to Herring’s report, Downs is holding a freight elevator door open with his foot. Later, Downs is seen back at Hoyt’s around the time the woman is leaving.

“Combined with the staff member’s presence outside Captain Mathur’s hotel room late at night and the attacker’s knowledge of exactly which room to target,” reads the amended complaint, “this shows the Wyndham Hotel housekeeping staff member was an accomplice to the intruder. The staff member reappeared in the lobby restaurant to assure the attacker successfully escaped.”

Mathur is suing for negligence and “spoliation,” referring to a claim that additional security video, from three or four other cameras, was lost or destroyed, including the video of Downs that Herring watched.

Herring says in his report that neither security personnel or the housekeeping manager or Chicago Police said Downs told anyone of a guest being robbed. Downs did supposedly tell his supervisor that he had nothing to do with “screaming and craziness” that night, leaving the hotel a half-hour before he was scheduled to clock out.

He says he tried without success to locate Downs for an interview.

The hotel disputes Mathur’s claim that the housekeeping employee was working with the assailant.

“There is no evidence of plaintiff’s conspiracy theory,” wrote one of the hotel’s attorneys, Ann MacDonald (right), in a response to a previous amended complaint, “that a housekeeper conspired in the alleged robbery, let alone evidence that anyone at Wyndham had knowledge of the alleged conspiracy.”

Herring no longer works for Wyndham. In December 2013, he went to work as Director of Security and Loss Management for Commune Hotels & Resorts.

Stabbing at hotel sends suburban man to hospital

Meanwhile, a 51-year-old man from the western suburbs had to get stitches after he was cut by a broken bottle in a fight at Wyndham Grand Riverfront Hotel early Monday morning.

The unidentified man was cut on his arm at about 12:30 a.m. and taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

Police say Eric Padilla, age 20, from Cicero, Illinois, west of the Loop, took off after the attack but was caught a few blocks away near North State Street & East Washington Street.

Padilla was charged with battery, released on bond, and is due back in court on August 17.