Police searched late into the night for the gunman who opened fire on a subway train in Brooklyn on Tuesday, in an attack that left 10 gunshot wounds and again disrupted New York City's long road to post-pandemic normalcy.
The search focused in part on the man who, according to authorities, rented a van that could be related to the attack.
Investigators insisted that they were not sure whether that man, Frank R. James, 62, was responsible for the shooting. But the authorities were examining videos posted on social networks in which he denounced that the United States was a racist place mired in violence and in which he sometimes charged the city's mayor, Eric Adams.
“This nation was born into violence, it is kept alive by violence or the threat of violence and is going to have a violent death. There is nothing to stop it,” James said in a video.
Police Commissioner Keechant Sewwell said the publications were “worrying” and the authorities reinforced Adams' security.
The gunman threw smoke grenades into a crowded subway car and then fired at least 33 shots with a 9 mm caliber pistol. Five of the people shot had a critical prognosis but are expected to survive. At least a dozen others were treated in hospitals for gunshot impacts, smoke inhalation and other conditions.
One passenger, Jordan Javier, thought that the first sound he heard was a book falling to the floor. Then there was another explosion, people began to move towards the front of the car and realized that there was smoke, he said.
When the train entered the station, people ran out and went to another convoy on the other side of the platform. Passengers were crying and praying as they left the place, Javier said.
“I am grateful to be alive,” he said.
The aggressor fled in chaos, leaving behind the weapon, high-capacity magazines, an axe, detonated and undetonated smoke grenades, a black trash can, an organizing cart, gasoline and the key to a U-Haul truck.
The key led investigators to James, who has addresses in Philadelphia and Wisconsin, explained police chief detective James Essig. The van was later found empty near a train station where, according to investigators, the gunman accessed the city's metro network, Essig added.
The videos posted on YouTube allegedly by James, who is black, are full of violent language and intolerant comments, some against other black people.
In one published on April 11, he criticizes crime against blacks and says that drastic measures are needed. Several of the recordings mention the New York subway.
In a Feb. 20 video, he says that the mayor's and governor's plan to address the problem of indigence and safety on the subway “is doomed to fail” and refers to itself as a “victim” of the city's mental health programs. In another on January 25, he criticizes Adams' plan to end gun violence.
Adams, who is in quarantine after testing positive for COVID-19 on Sunday, said in a video statement that the city “will not allow New Yorkers to be terrorized, even by a single individual.”
(with information from AP)
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