New Delhi: The suspect apprehended for the New York subway shooting had repeatedly made hateful comments toward African Americans.
The man identified as Frank Robert James criticised the New York mayor in videos posted on YouTube, including one uploaded as recently as Monday.
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The suspect had opened smoke grenades on the train and fired his gun 33 times, wounding at least 23 people on Tuesday morning.
62-year-old Frank Robert James was arrested on Wednesday by patrol officers in New York City’s East Village.
As per CNN News, James posted a video last week where he rants about abuse in churches and racism in the workplace, using misogynistic and racist language.
He talked about community violence and went on to say, “We need to see more mass shootings. Yeah. … We need to see more, there have to be more mass shootings to make a n***er understand. … It’s not about the shooter; it’s about the environment in which he is, he has to exist.”
In a video posted in February, James criticised a plan by New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ administration to tackle issues of safety and homelessness in the subway in part through an expanded presence of mental health professionals.
In that recording, James said the new effort was “doomed to fail” and described his own negative experience with city health workers during a “crisis of mental health back in the ’90s ’80s and ’70s,” CNN News reported.
As per news agency ANI, NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell said on Tuesday said that preliminary information indicated James mentioned homelessness, New York City, and its mayor in online posts.
Sewell informed that the city would increase the mayor’s security.
In another video, James claimed that he had post-traumatic stress. He stated that he left his home in Milwaukee on March 20. During the trip eastward, he said he was heading to the “danger zone.”
“You know, it’s triggering a lot of negative thoughts of course,” he said in the video adding, “I do have a severe case of post-traumatic stress.”
Frank Robert James’s statements made in his YouTube videos had a common theme throughout as he repeatedly expressed hatred toward African Americans.
According to the US Attorney for Eastern District of New York Breon Peace, the Brooklyn subway shooting suspect has a very rich history of arrests in previous years in several states.
“His arrest history in New York is nine prior arrests dating from 1990 to 1998, those include possession of burglary tools four times, criminal sex act, theft of service two times,” Peace said during a press briefing, as quoted by ANU.
He revealed that James is well known to law enforcement and has ties in the states of Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
The suspect also has three arrests in the state of New Jersey in 1991, 1992 and 2007, Peace informed.
(With Agency Inputs)