A man who was shot in an attack on a Brooklyn subway station has described how he sat next to the suspected shooter on the train before chaos erupted.
Nearly 30 people were injured when a man wearing a gas mask and a green vest threw a gas canister inside the carriage of an N train travelling to Manhattan during rush hour on Tuesday morning.
He opened fire while the trained pulled into 36 Street at Sunset Park around 8.30am, shooting at least 10 people inside the train and on the station platform, and sparking panic among rush-hour commuters. More than a dozen people suffered non-life-threatening injuries from gunshot and shrapnel wounds to smoke inhalation.
While the gunman remains on the run, police have revealed that 62-year-old Frank R James is considered a suspect in the shooting.
Hourari Benkada, who got shot in the leg, said the incident has left him wondering if he will ever be able to ride a train again, CNN reported.
Mr Benkada said he was on his way to work and had boarded the train just moments before the smoke device went off.
He had transferred trains at the 59th Street station, one stop before 36th Street. He said that he just walked in and sat down. “So the guy next to me ... all you see is like a black smoke bomb going off. People rushing to the back.”
“There was a pregnant woman. She said ‘I am pregnant with a baby’ so i hugged her,” he added. “The bomb rush continued and that’s when I got shot in the back end of my knee.”
Mr Benkada said the alleged shooter was sitting barely 12 feet to his left, but he did not see his face as he was “not paying attention”.
“I just had my headphones in my ear, my phone in my hand, minding my business my head down sitting down,” he said. “But this makes me want to not ride a train ever again in my life.”
According to Mr Benkada, the train takes barely two minutes to go from 59th street to 36th, but Tuesday’s journey took longer as the train kept stopping.
“It took forever [for the doors to open]. And it’s an old style train, you can’t switch cars. We had to break [the doors]. Somebody broke the first door down, the second door was very hard to break.”
He said that his focus was on the pregnant woman, and “that’s when I got shot in the leg”.
“When she [the pregnant woman] saw the smoke she got up. I see that she has a belly. The smoke went off first and then the gunshots. That’s when she said ‘I am pregnant’ so I gave her a hug.”
“I didn’t think it [the gunshot to his knee] was serious till I got out of the train and pulled my pants down and that’s when I saw blood gushing out.”
Showing his injury, Mr Benkada explained that “the bullet went through the back of the knee and came out on the side.”
“It was the size of a quarter,” he said.
Mr Benkada is receiving care in the hospital and does not know yet when he will be discharged.
