Screengrab of YouTube video
On Wednesday, the New York Police Department arrested 62-year-old Frank R. James for the mass shooting on a subway train in Brooklyn that left at least 23 people injured on Tuesday. The arrest was made after law enforcement went on a more than 24-hour search for the suspect.
“We got him,” New York Mayor Eric Adams confirmed at an afternoon news conference Wednesday. “We got him.”
Authorities said that James was arrested in the East Village after receiving a tip from a McDonald’s on Sixth Street and First Avenue. When officers arrived to the McDonald’s, James was nowhere to be found. They began surveilling the area and discovered him on the corner of St. Marks Place and 1st Avenue (in East Village) and arrested him.
“We were able to shrink his world quickly,” New York’s Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said. “There was nowhere left for him to run.”
Officials claimed that James had an extensive criminal background with nine prior arrests in New York that were mostly for misdemeanors and three arrests in New Jersey.
It took a while for officials to find James because he camouflaged his appearance by wearing a construction worker’s helmet, vest, and gas mask on the day of the shooting. Before firing his weapon, James threw two smoke grenades on the floor of an N train and started shooting around 8:30 a.m. He managed to avoid law enforcement by fleeing the N train and boarding the R train, which is also where some of his victims fled to. However, he left behind his Glock 9-millimeter handgun, three ammunition magazines, a credit card with his name on it, and a U-Haul van. The van was found unaccompanied at in the Gravesend neighborhood later that day, five miles from the 36th station, where the shooting occurred. The van was rented in Philadelphia.
The non-working security cameras near the scene of the crime made it difficult to track James. One officer said that none of the security cameras seemed to be in full operation when the shooting happened.
The attack happened in an area where immigrants from different Latin countries reside. And with the city already having to cope with a rise in shootings citywide and rise in crime in the subway, it could be a real challenge for officials to convince riders that the subway is safe.
While the motive behind the shooting is unknown, it is known that James has kept an appearance online through YouTube under the username prophetoftruth88. The videos last between 20 to 50 minutes and shows James covering topics from disparaging Black women to criticizing Mayor Adams for his inability to control
crime on the subway and claimed the mayor’s fight against gun violence would fail.While YouTube has removed videos of James’ rant and other videos, one YouTuber named Cinema Shotgun has part of the suspect’s rant on one video he uploaded about the shooting towards the end of the video.
Watch here: