A Hempstead man was sentenced to 30 years in prison for a 2023 shooting at a bar on the Nautical Mile in Freeport that struck and seriously injured two victims, including the bar’s security guard, who was left paralyzed from the neck down.
On July 15, 2023, at Agua on the Mile, a bar on the Nautical Mile in Freeport, Tiray Clemmons got into a verbal altercation with the manager and was denied re-entry to the bar by a security guard. Moments later, at approximately 10:12 p.m., Clemmons returned to the bar in a black sedan, got out, and immediately began shooting at the 23-year-old security guard. Clemmons fired six rounds from a .357 firearm, striking the security guard and another innocent bystander.
The security guard was shot in the back, severely injuring his spinal cord. The victim was transported to South Nassau Hospital, where he underwent emergency life-saving surgery. The shooting paralyzed the man from the neck down and he will never walk or regain full use of his arms again.
Another innocent bystander was struck by two of the defendant’s bullets, in the neck and scrotum, which also required the victim to undergo surgery.
The defendant fled the scene after the shooting and disposed of the firearm in the canal behind Agua on the Mile. The firearm was recovered on July 19, 2023, by a Nassau County Police Department recovery dive team.
Clemmons, 34, was arrested on July 15, 2023, by members of the Nassau County Police Department’s Gang Investigations Squad, First Precinct Squad, and Freeport Police Department. He was convicted on September 16, 2025, after a jury trial before Judge Meryl Berkowitz of two counts of Attempted Murder in the Second Degree and two counts of Assault in the First Degree (all Class B violent felonies); Criminal Use of a Firearm in the First Degree (a Class B felony); and two counts of Criminal Possession of a Weapon in the Second Degree (a Class C violent felony).
On December 3, Clemmons was sentenced to 30 years in prison and five years’ post-release supervision.
“Tiray Clemmons was angry that he was kicked out of a bar, and he turned to wanton violence,” said Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly. “He could have gone home to lick his wounds but instead he picked up a gun and started shooting. Firing into the crowded bar, this defendant targeted the security guard who kept him out, striking the young man in the spine and paralyzing him from the neck down. Clemmons was denied re-entry into a bar, and because of his malice and brutality, an innocent man is now cruelly denied the chance to ever hold his three-year-old daughter again.”