Authorities on Wednesday continued searching for the attacker who they said shot 10 people on a subway train in Brooklyn a day earlier, setting off panic and a sprawling investigation.
Police on Wednesday morning said that a man sought in the investigation was now considered a suspect, after they had previously called him a person if interest in the case.
According to law enforcement officials, an attacker donned a gas mask and then flooded a subway car in Brooklyn with smoke before opening fire on Tuesday morning, striking 10 people. Five of them were left in critical but stable condition, officials said, and none of the wounds were believed to be life-threatening.
But the shooting aboard a subway car at the height of the morning commute set off panic in New York, which has already been grappling with a rise in gun violence in recent years.
During a briefing on Tuesday evening, police said Frank James, 62, was considered a person if interest in the subway attack, but they were careful not to call him a suspect.
A New York police spokeswoman said that status had shifted Wednesday morning, and he was now a suspect, though she did not elaborate on what led to the change.
As the manhunt continued into a second day, significant questions still remained, including what could have motivated the attack, which transformed an ordinary morning commute into panicked mayhem.
When police responded to the shooting scene, they found nearly three dozen spent shell casings, a pair of used smoke grenades, two undetonated smoke grenades and a hatchet. But the attacker, they said, was gone.
They also found a key for a U-Haul van, which was later recovered in Brooklyn, police said. That U-Haul, they said, connected police with James, who they said had rented the van in Philadelphia.
James Essig, chief of detectives for the New York police, had described the man as a person of interest Tuesday evening, but was cautious in describing his possible tie to the attack.
“We are endeavoring to locate him to determine his connection to the subway shooting, if any,” Essig said.
Investigators were confident James was at the scene of the shooting, based on the discovery of his credit card and the van he rented, according to an official familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the ongoing investigation.
But because his height did not seem to match the description offered by some witnesses, the official said on Tuesday evening, authorities did not feel confident identifying James as the suspected shooter.
The Washington Post was unable to immediately reach James or family members Tuesday night. Police said James had addresses in Wisconsin and Philadelphia.
Social media accounts appearing to belong to James offered a glimpse of a man who had criticized New York Democratic Mayor Eric Adams, ranted and cursed in videos and described a familiarity with “the mental health system of New York City.”
Keechant Sewell, the New York police commissioner, said Tuesday evening there were “concerning” social media posts connected to James in which he talked about the city, homelessness and Adams, prompting heightened security for the mayor.
A YouTube account with more than 2,300 subscribers under the name of “prophet oftruth88” created in 2014 shows a man who appears to be James ranting and cursing in front of the camera in numerous videos.
In January, in a 44-minute video titled “DEAR MR MAYOR,” James criticized Adams’s plans for gun violence and mental health issues.
Tackling violent crime and public safety has been a pivotal priority for Adams, the former police captain elected mayor last year.
James, who said he was born and raised in New York City, condemned employment and training programs for low-income Black youth, adding that he had been a “victim” of those and calling his experience there a “horror show.”
He warned Adams that his program might slow down gun violence and a mental health epidemic, “but you aren’t going to stop it. . . . Violence is a part of your city. Violent people live in your city.”
The eruption of violence in Brooklyn came a little before 8:30 a.m. Tuesday aboard an N train that was heading towards Manhattan.
According to police, a heavyset man seated in the back of the second train car lobbed a pair of smoke grenades onto the floor as it neared the 36th Street Station.
As smoke began to suffuse the car, they said, the man pulled out a Glock 9mm handgun and fired 33 rounds.
He then fled, leaving behind panicked commuters and a bloody scene on the station platform.
On Wednesday morning, commuters had returned to trains that began rumbling again through the 36th Street Station. Transit officials said early Wednesday morning that trains returned to that station after police concluded their investigation there.
Police had identified at least one issue facing their investigation at the station. Adams, in a radio interview Tuesday, said there was “some form of malfunction with the camera system” at the station. Essig, speaking later in the day, said that video cameras were not working at three subway stations.
The shooting sent tremors through Sunset Park, the Brooklyn neighborhood where the shooting took place and a longtime hub for working-class immigrant communities.
New Yorkers’ sense of safety has declined recently, with a poll released by Quinnipiac University in February finding that less than half of the city’s voters felt safe using the subway during the daytime, compared to 76% six years ago.
In the same survey, three-quarters of the city’s voters said that crime is a very serious problem, the highest proportion since the survey started asking the question in 1999.
At a briefing in Brooklyn on Tuesday, New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul promised to deploy “the full resources of the state” to fight crime at a time when the city’s residents craved stability after the long years of the pandemic.
“No more mass shootings. No more disrupting lives. No more creating heartbreak for people just trying to live their lives as normal New Yorkers,” Hochul said. “It has to end, it ends now.”
Marcela Mitaynes, a member of the New York State Assembly who represents Sunset Park as well as nearby Red Hook and parts of Bay Ridge, walked up and down Brooklyn’s Fourth Avenue on Tuesday, checking in on her constituents.
“There is certainly a lot of talk about crime being on the rise, and our safety, and I can certainly understand that,” she said. “But this is nothing near what this neighborhood was like when I was growing up in the late ’70s and the ’80s.”
After the shooting, people rushed to help one another, warning others to stay out of the station and providing medical aid to those bleeding on the ground.
Fitim Gjeloshi said he had just missed the N train he regularly takes to South Brooklyn Community High School on Tuesday morning, so he boarded the next train and unknowingly sat close to the man who would open fire.
“The guy was already in there,” Gjeloshi, 20, said in an interview.
Something was off, he said, as the assailant was talking to himself while he stood on a corner inside the train. “He looked at me and I looked back at him,” Gjeloshi said.
The express train began moving once its doors shut and stopped between 36th and 59th Streets because of a delay, he said. That’s when the man – who had a piece of luggage with wheels with him – put on a gas mask, Gjeloshi said.
For the next five minutes, as the train remained still and smoke filled the car, the gunman shot at as many people as he could, Gjeloshi told The Post.
“All I heard was ‘boom, boom, boom,'” Gjeloshi said. “He just kept going.”
At some point, Gjeloshi attempted to fight him, but he said the man came after him with what appeared to be an ax and pointed a gun at him before he managed to escape to the back of the train.
“He tried shooting at me, but he shot the other kid next to me,” he said.
When the train doors opened at 36th Street, Gjeloshi said, the man fled. Gjeloshi, meanwhile, walked away from the train with blood still on his shoes from the person sitting next to him.
(c) 2022, The Washington Post · Mark Berman, Joanna Slater, Andrea Salcedo
{Matzav.com}
Typical Compost drivel.
Adams is an adult incompetent affermative action appointee. This bum only got in because of his hatred for real cops.
Technically, violence is a part of NY, with a modifier. The vast majority thereof is perpetrated by two distinct demographics, with the shooter’s being the absolute winner. So, yes, blacks’ violence is unfortunately a part of NYC, and of wherever else they reside. In criminal statistics, 13 equals 90.
If these “ethnic” murderers cannot contain their hereditary bloodlust, at the very least they should limit its expression to their own neighborhoods and people. Since their lives don’t seem to matter to themselves, others should not object or interfere.