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The suspect in the subway shooting has been arrested, officials say. [nytimes.com]:
Brooklyn Subway Shooting
- liveUpdates [nytimes.com]
- What to Know [nytimes.com]
- Who Is Frank James? [nytimes.com]
- Photos [nytimes.com]
- Reconstructing the Shooting [nytimes.com]
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Continue reading the main storyLIVEBrooklyn Subway Shooting [nytimes.com]The suspect in the subway shooting has been arrested, officials say. The shooting on Tuesday led to a sprawling manhunt for Frank R. James, who was taken into custody on Wednesday.Credit...Dakota Santiago for The New York Times
Troy Closson [nytimes.com], Jonah E. Bromwich [nytimes.com] and
- April 13, 2022Updated 3:16 p.m. ET
A man who the police said was a suspect in the Brooklyn subway shooting, Frank R. James, was taken into custody on Wednesday, more than 24 hours into the expansive search that erupted after a gunman shot at least 10 people in a train station.
Mayor Eric Adams confirmed in a news conference Wednesday afternoon that Mr. James had been apprehended.
“We got him,” Mr. Adams said. “We got him.”
Mr. James was arrested in the East Village, officials said, and has been charged with having committed a terrorist act on a mass transit system, according to Breon S. Peace, the U.S. attorney for New York’s Eastern District. If convicted, Mr. James could face a sentence of up to life in prison.
Officials said that Mr. James was apprehended thanks to a tip that came in from a McDonald’s on Sixth Street and First Avenue. Officers responded to the McDonald’s, and when Mr. James was not present, they began driving around the neighborhood. They found him on the corner of St. Marks Place and 1st Avenue, one of the busiest intersections in the East Village, and took him into custody without incident.
“We were able to shrink his world quickly,” said New York’s Police Commissioner, Keechant Sewell. “There was nowhere left for him to run.”
Mr. James had a significant criminal history, officials said, including nine prior arrests in New York, mostly for misdemeanors and three arrests in New Jersey.
Officials said that he had left the N train where the shooting had taken place and boarded a local train, the R train, that several of his victims had also fled to. He exited the subway system at 25th Street and managed to evade law enforcement for more than 24 hours.
The development on Wednesday represents a significant step in the investigation into the Sunset Park shooting, which left at least 23 people injured. Officials said Mr. James was the man who, wearing a construction worker’s helmet and vest and a gas mask, had thrown two smoke grenades on the floor of an N train and unleashed a barrage of gunfire into the car around 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday.
He escaped the scene, but the police discovered an array of belongings on the train that he appeared to have left behind, including a Glock 9-millimeter handgun, three ammunition magazines, a credit card with Mr. James’s name on it and a key to a U-Haul van.
ImageFrank R. JamesCredit...via New York City Police Department
That vehicle was found abandoned on a street in the Gravesend neighborhood late Tuesday afternoon, about five miles from the 36th Street station, where the shooting took place. The police said that Mr. James had rented the vehicle in Philadelphia, possibly sometime over the last few days.
The vast manhunt for Mr. James, who has addresses in Philadelphia and Wisconsin, included a broad review of security cameras throughout the subway system; a more than 17-block wide ground canvass in Sunset Park for stores’ surveillance footage or other signs of Mr. James; and a search for information on the gun, which matched a serial number in federal records.
But the investigation was complicated by the malfunctioning of at least one security camera in the subway station where the mass shooting took place, and one senior law enforcement official briefed on the investigation said that it appeared none were in full operation at the time of the gunfire.
The shooting on Tuesday, a bloody attack during the morning commute in an area that is home to many immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries, represented another steep challenge for state and city officials to convince riders that the subways are safe, following a spate of other high-profile attacks in recent months.
The motive behind the attack remained unclear on Wednesday.
But Mr. James appeared to have maintained a significant online presence in recent years, posting dozens of videos on social media. Some were featured on a YouTube channel belonging to the username prophetoftruth88, from which the police obtained a screenshot of him to release to the public. In at least one post, the man in the video identified himself as Frank James.
In the recordings, many of them between 20 and 50 minutes in length, the man offered lengthy tirades, often on subjects of race, violence and his personal life.
He disparaged Black people and particularly Black women. And he recently criticized Mr. Adams for his policies focusing on homeless people and safety in the subway system.
Andy Newman contributed reporting.
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