After 29 hours in which police combed the streets, scoured surveillance cameras, patrolled subway platforms and sent phone alerts across New York, a subway train in Brooklyn was set on fire and injuring at least 23 people. The accused person was arrested. near McDonald’s in the East Village on Wednesday, officials said.
Suspect, Frank R. James, 62, was taken into custody without a struggle about 5 miles from the station, where he is accused of committing one of the worst attacks on New York’s subway system.
“My fellow New Yorkers: We got him,” Mayor Eric Adams said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon. “We got that.”
According to a criminal complaint filed in federal court in Brooklyn, federal officials charged James with conducting a terroristic attack on a mass transit system. If convicted, he could face life in prison. He is expected to appear in court on Thursday.
It was not clear who alerted police that McDonald’s was on 1st Avenue shortly before James was arrested at 1.40 p.m.
There were several calls to the officers, and a series of people took credit for bringing him in. Several law enforcement officers also said that James himself may have called the tip line. Police Commissioner Keechant L. Sewell said detectives were investigating who provided information about McDonald’s.
James’s arrest provided some relief to residents worried about an accused gunman at large on the transit system, and to officials who feared the city at a precarious moment in its recovery from another high-profile violent act on the subway. Confidence will decrease. global pandemic.
“Everyone is on edge because of what happened yesterday,” said Lee Lloyd, who was the owner in the East Village, when officers surrounded James and took him into custody. “When we saw five police cars coming, I was like, ‘Oh man, what now?’ ,
But as the extensive search operation for James, involving several federal and state agencies and hundreds of officials, draws to a close, the investigation has left many questions unanswered. Police officials and prosecutors have yet to give a reason for the shooting, in which 10 people were wounded by gunfire and at least 13 others concerned.
In this photo provided by Will B. Wylde, a man helps outside a subway car in the Brooklyn Borough of New York on April 12, 2022. (AP/PTI)
The victims of the shooting ranged from 15-year-old boys to 40-year-old men and women. At least nine people remained hospitalized on Wednesday, but all are in a stable condition and there is no threat to their lives. Among those injured in the attack were many teenagers or college students who were on a normally mundane trek – going to school on a train.
Rudy Perez, 20, had a left leg injury and was helped out of the train by another passenger, he said. Doctors told him that it would take him about a month to walk again. Until then, Perez, who works in construction, is unsure how he will be able to do his job and is concerned about his safety.
“I’m afraid it will happen again,” he said, “I’m worried about everyone else.”
Authorities have not fully informed about James’s whereabouts after the shooting. And with the attack provoking questions about ongoing efforts to make the subway safer, transit officials admitted on Wednesday that a surveillance camera at the station where the attack took place was not working properly.
Emergency personnel work at a shooting site at a subway station in the Brooklyn Borough of New York City, New York, US, April 12, 2022. (Reuters)
Maintenance personnel inspected cameras at the station on Sunday, transit officials said, two days before the shooting, and traced the problem to a fiber-optic cable connection failure, which also interrupted feeds from cameras in two other stations. : Local stop shooting immediately before the scene and immediately after.
Adams said Tuesday that the issue had initially slowed police efforts to identify and trace the gunman.
Although James was initially described as a person of interest whom police wanted to question, police said early Wednesday he was considered the lone gunman as their investigation progressed.
“We were able to shrink his world quickly,” Sewell said. “There was nowhere left for them to run.”
This handout photo provided by the New York City Police Department (NYPD) shows Frank James, a man of interest in the shooting that took place on the N Train in Brooklyn, New York, New York. (New York City Police Department) (NYPD)/Handout via Reuters)
Police have accused James of applying a gas mask to an N train, then dropping two smoke grenades and firing Glock 9mm handguns at passengers as the train pulled into the 36th Street station in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood.
James, who has addresses in Wisconsin and Philadelphia, first came to the attention of police when investigators at the crime scene found a series of items on the train, including a gun, a credit card with James’ name on it, and a U key. Was. The hall van was later found to have been hired, officials said.
The Police Department’s chief of detectives, James Essig, said investigators could see James in the video entering King’s Highway station on the N Line, eight stops from the shooting site. Essig said the U-Haul vehicle he had hired was found three blocks from that station.
An official close to the investigation said the video showed James in an orange reflector jacket and a yellow construction cap, which was later found at the crime scene, which was not authorized to discuss it publicly. Was. In the video, James swipes a Metrocard and struggles to pass through the turnstile. He then catches the attention of a station agent and enters the station through a gate.
Police say a photo of a van linked to a shooting at a subway station as law enforcement officers investigate April 12, 2022 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, New York, US. (Reuters)
Federal officials say surveillance footage later showed James exiting the subway system at 25th Street station, which was a stop from the shooting site, according to the criminal complaint.
Essig said detectives believe James boarded an R train across the platform from the N train at 36th Street station, as did some of the shooting victims and several panicked riders. Then he rode to a stop and walked out.
Essig said James was next seen entering the 7th Avenue subway stop in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood, more than a mile away, at around 9:15 a.m. Tuesday. At the time, detectives were beginning their efforts to track him down.
It is not yet clear where he traveled next, and Essig said detectives were continuing to review the video footage. “We’re going to back it up,” he said. “It will literally take weeks.”
New York City transit workers arrive at a subway stop in the Brooklyn borough of New York on April 12, 2022. (new York Times)
As they hunted for information, police used an emergency alert – usually weather warnings or to find kidnapped children – to point people across town to James’ photographs. Urged people to call a phone number with tips.
The uncertainty surrounding James’ location put some commuters on edge on the city’s bustling subway system on Wednesday, along with pressure from authorities to locate the gunman. Many riders said they were determined to go on with their normal routine, but some admitted to feelings of uneasiness while riding the trains.
Building painter Marco Meza, 38, said he lives near the shooting site. At the busy Atlantic-Barclays station on Wednesday, he said he was still in shock, and he was struggling to let go of feelings that he should avoid the subway. But he has no choice.
“I have to do it,” said Meja. “I have to get up every morning to do my work.”
A police officer checks the Manhattan subway after a shooting at a subway station in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, New York, US, on April 12, 2022. (Reuters)
Metro is the backbone of New York and officials are focused on addressing concerns about its safety as they try to restore ridership at the start of the pandemic.
Following the shooting, officials including Governors Kathy Hochul, Sewell and Jano Lieber, the head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, posted photos or videos on social media showing them on public transport. He and Adams, who are in isolation after testing positive for Covid, urged the riders to return.
“The Metro has a special place in the heart of New York,” Lieber said on MSNBC. “We will never let it be taken over by the lunatics.”
While ridership data for Wednesday was not yet available, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said Tuesday, the day of the attack, was down from about 312,000 people a week ago to about 3.05 million riders.
On several busy platforms, early riders said that the Brooklyn shooting had already become a distant memory, or that their worries had faded away as they needed to make a living.
Thank you to our MTA workers who always keep New Yorkers moving. pic.twitter.com/8YUoC6EPWz
— Governor Kathy Hochul (@GovKathyHochul) 12 April 2022
When 30-year-old Louis Dacunha was asked about the shooting, his response was, “Oh yeah, it happened.”
“I wasn’t even thinking about it,” he said. “I was just thinking, ‘I gotta get where I need to go.’ ,
As James was taken into custody, more details emerged about a life that included several arrests.
According to public records, he was born in 1959 in New York City, and his sister, Katherine James Robinson, said he often moved between cities.
Police officers said he was arrested nine times in New York between 1992-98 on multiple charges including possession of stolen equipment, a felony sexual act and criminal molestation. He was arrested three times in New Jersey, first in 1991, most recently in 2007.
In filling out a portrait of James, detectives have focused on dozens of videos he said he posted on YouTube in which he made lofty rants tied to current events.
In some, he commented on New York’s subway, criticized Adams’ policies for addressing the homeless on public transportation as ineffective and speculated that the mayor could not possibly stop all crimes in the system. In others, they thought of violent acts and indicated vaguely about the possibility of committing them.
Inside a jacket abandoned on a subway platform on 36th Street, investigators found a receipt from a storage facility in Philadelphia where they rented an apartment for nearly two weeks starting in late March, according to a federal criminal complaint. .
The criminal complaint said that when they searched the storage unit and its apartment on Tuesday and Wednesday, they found handgun ammunition, a Taser, a high-capacity rifle magazine and a smoke canister.