The suspect who allegedly set off a smoke bomb and opened fire on a crowded Brooklyn subway train has finally been arrested after a 29-hour manhunt.
Chaos erupted at the 36th Street station in Sunset Park during rush hour on Tuesday morning as 10 people were shot and more than a dozen injured.
Police announced the arrest of Frank R James on Wednesday afternoon amid mounting questions over how he was able to escape and remain on the run for so long. He was apprehended in Manhattan’s East Village neighbourhood by patrol officers.
The suspect was originally described as a Black male with a “heavy build” standing at around 5’5” and 180lbs. He was said to have been wearing a gas mask and green “construction-style” vest over a grey hooded sweatshirt.
Mr James, 62, was named as a person of interest in the attack on Tuesday evening before Mayor Eric Adams announced that he had been upgraded to a suspect on Wednesday morning.
Police had initially said they did not know if Mr James, who has addresses in Wisconsin and Philadelphia, was the shooter but that he had rented a U-Haul van linked to the attack, which was found abandoned several miles from the scene.
Newsweek reported that Mr James was known to the FBI prior to the attack. The outlet cited an unnamed law enforcement source who said Mr James was entered into the FBI’s Guardian lead system but was cleared in 2019 after multiple interviews.
A $50,000 reward was offered for information leading to an arrest as authorities revealed that the gunman had opened fire at least 33 times with a Glock 9-millimeter handgun.
A gun, magazines, gas canisters and fireworks were recovered from the scene. Investigators believe the suspect may have been forced to stop shooting when the gun jammed.
As the manhunt dragged on, authorities came under scrutiny for the suspect’s escape as Mayor Adams confirmed that surveillance cameras in the 36th Street station malfunctioned and thus did not capture the attack.
NYPD commissioner Keechant Sewell said the attack was “not being investigated as an act of terrorism” before later saying she was “not ruling anything out” when pressed by reporters.
“We do not know the motive,” she said.
It later emerged that Mayor Adams’ security was upgraded due to disturbing videos purportedly showing Mr James ranting at him by name.
Mr Adams’ office said it had increased his protection detail “out of an abundance of caution” until Mr James is found. Police said they had found “concerning posts” online that named Mr Adams, without saying whether they were made by Mr James.
However, a YouTube account called “prophet oftruth88”, whose videos matched a screenshot shared by police, had repeatedly posted videos addressing Mr Adams and sometimes expressing violent thoughts.
“These are the people that were supposed to be helping me,” said Mr James, gesturing at photos on a projector screen behind him, in a video seen by The Independent. “They made me worse! They f***ing made me worse.
“They made me more dangerous than I could ever have been, than anything anybody could ever f*** ing imagine. But these are the people that Eric Adams wants to send out to help the homeless and whoever the case may be.”
Over the past two years, Mr James posted more than 250 videos to YouTube, ranging freely between personal anecdotes, political polemic, and discussion of current affairs or montages of news clips.
In one video, taken while driving van through Indiana to Philadelphia, he said: “I’m heading back into the danger zone, so to speak, and it’s triggering a lot of negative thoughts of course. Because I do have a bad, severe case of post-traumatic stress, after the s*** I’ve been through over the f***ing years, man.”
Another video showed him saying: “Lest I forget, I’ve been through a lot of s*** – where I could say I wanted to kill people. I wanted to watch people die right in front of my f***ing face immediately. But I thought about the fact that, hey man, I don’t want to go to no f***ing prison.”
In many videos, Mr James, who is Black, appeared to be preoccupied with and appalled by violent crime, especially crime committed by Black people. He repeatedly expressed antipathy to Black people and blamed “ghetto culture” and “slave culture” for violence.
“Ultimately, it’s not our fault. Ultimately, it’s the white man’s fault that we’re in this condition,” he said in a video recorded at what he said was an Airbnb and uploaded on 30 March. “But then simultaneously, the reason why we stay where we are is our fault.“
His videos often show him drinking while talking to his audience, and one shows a row of empty bottles of strong liquor lined up in his room. A spokesperson for Airbnb said they had been liaising with police and could find no Airbnb accounts or reservations associated with Mr James.
According to The Daily Beast, one video showed him telling Mr Adams that he had been through New York’s mental health system and experienced treatment that made people want to “go and get a gun and shoot motherf***ers”.
Mr James reportedly said: “I have been in crisis, as a patient. I have a diagnosis that goes back to 1980, and I have been in crisis... what’s going on in these places is violence. Not physical violence, but the same kind of violence that’s similar to what a child may experience in grade school.”
A federal law enforcement source told Newsweek the attack could not be officially classified as terrorism until a motivation was determined.
Two current theories, the source told the outlet, are that he was an MTA employee or was conducting surveillance in preparation for a future attack.
They added he wore an MTA uniform and utility belt, and was seen fleeing in the direction of a Manhattan-bound R train. Subway tunnels were searched as part of the manhunt and police recovered a U-Haul van with Arizona plates that may have been used in the escape.
Authorities investigated reports of “undetonated devices”, but ultimately determined there were no active explosive devices on the scene.
Dramatic footage posted online showed terrified commuters running away from a subway carriage filled with smoke following the attack. Some lay on the ground suffering from gunshots, shrapnel smoke inhalation and “panic” as people attempted to flee.
