Brooklyn shooting suspect Frank James arrested and in custody

Police arrest the suspected gunman who opened fire in a Brooklyn subway train, ending a 30-hour manhunt.

Suspect Frank James is led by police from Ninth Precinct after being arrested for his connection to the mass shooting at the 36th St subway station in New York City.

Police arrested the suspected gunman who opened fire in a Brooklyn subway train during Tuesday’s morning rush hour, ending a 30-hour manhunt.

New York Police Department officials said officers on patrol in Manhattan’s East Village neighborhood took alleged shooter Frank James into custody Wednesday afternoon. Officers responding to a tip recognised Mr. James on the street there and apprehended him without incident, the officials said.

Mr. James, 62 years old, will be charged with a terroristic act on mass transit and faces the possibility of life in prison, federal prosecutors said. Mr. James traveled across state lines to commit his alleged offenses, according to prosecutors. He is scheduled to appear Thursday in Brooklyn federal court.

“When you bring a smoke bomb, when you bring an automatic weapon, wear a gas mask, in a very methodical way, injure and attempt to harm innocent New Yorkers, that is terror,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams said.

Ten people were injured by gunfire in the attack Tuesday at the 36th Street subway station in Sunset Park, and 13 others were treated for smoke inhalation, panic attacks or falls. At least seven victims remained hospitalized Wednesday in stable condition, according to spokeswomen at two hospitals.

Hundreds of police officers and federal investigators worked overnight to search for the suspect in New York City and in other areas where he may have left clues, including Philadelphia and Wisconsin, where he had addresses, officials said. The NYPD worked with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, according to Mr. Adams and police officials.

The attack unnerved city residents by attacking the transportation system millions depend on daily. Shootings are up 8.4% year to date across New York City, at 322 incidents, compared with 297 in the same period in 2021, according to NYPD data. Murder and assault on the subway also rose last year. There were 461 felonious assaults, eight murders and eight rapes in the city’s subway system last year.

Jhon Pimentel, a student at Sunset Park High School, near the subway station where the attack occurred, said many of his classmates were absent from school Wednesday after Mr. James allegedly opened fire a day earlier.

“I wasn’t going to come today either,” the 18-year-old said. “I was scared.” Mr. Pimentel said although he was relieved to hear Mr. James was in custody, he would continue to think about the threat of mass shootings. “There could be someone else who does just what (Mr. James) did,” Mr. Pimentel said.

Mr. Adams, who took office in January, has made increasing public safety a centerpiece of his administration as he tries to encourage white-collar office workers to return to Manhattan after long stretches of working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic. In a survey of more than 9,300 New York City workers, safety, homelessness and mentally ill people -- particularly on the subway -- were the top reasons cited for their resistance to returning to the office.

Mr. James, who initially was described as a person of interest in the investigation, was named as a suspect Wednesday morning. Mr. Adams said new information gathered during the manhunt prompted investigators to consider Mr. James as a suspect.

Video surveillance picked up footage of a man matching Mr. James’s description leaving a U-Haul van in Brooklyn at about 6:15 a.m. Tuesday. The location was about two blocks from a train station on the same subway line where the attack took place, according to a complaint filed Wednesday by federal prosecutors. The man was wearing a yellow hard hat and orange construction jacket and was carrying a backpack and rolling bag, according to federal prosecutors.

About two hours later, the suspect allegedly set of a smoke bomb and shot subway riders as a train pulled into the 36th Street station. Afterward, Mr. James boarded another subway car that had just come into the station and exited at the 25th Street station in Brooklyn, police officials said.

Mr. James then entered another train station at 9:15 a.m. located at Seventh Avenue and Ninth Street in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope, police officials said. It was Mr. James’s last known whereabouts until the tip came from someone who spotted him in Manhattan’s East Village inside a McDonald’s restaurant, they said.

Police officers in the area searched the McDonald’s, but didn’t find Mr. James there, law-enforcement officials said. The officers searched the area nearby, found Mr. James and arrested him, they said.

New Yorkers in the neighborhood said they were surprised he was found in the area.

“I thought it was just another typical New York day, just a random arrest,” said Aleksei Korobow, 25, who was going for a walk when he saw police cars zoom by.

Then Mr. Korobow recognized the suspect. He said Mr. James was calm and didn’t seem to resist arrest.

“I was really in shock,” said Mr. Korobow, who works at a software company and lives in the neighborhood. “My thought was: It’s the East Village, it’s the middle of the day and this guy is just casually going for a walk. You would think after doing something horrible like that you’d go into hiding.” The 30-hour manhunt for Mr. James was wide-ranging. Law-enforcement officials on Tuesday executed a search warrant on a storage facility in Philadelphia where Mr. James rented a unit, according to the complaint filed by federal prosecutors. Officers recovered 9mm ammunition, a silencer, targets and .223 caliber ammunition, which is used with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, according to the complaint.

Law-enforcement officials also executed a search warrant at an apartment in Philadelphia that Mr. James had started renting last month and found an empty ammunition magazine for a handgun, a Taser, a high-capacity rifle magazine and a blue smoke canister, according to the complaint.

A 9mm handgun, extended ammunition magazines, a liquid believed to be gasoline, a hatchet and consumer-grade fireworks were found at the 36th Street subway station after the attack, New York City Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said. Police later found the U-Haul van they thought the suspect used abandoned on Kings Highway, a busy thoroughfare in Brooklyn.

Mr. James legally purchased the 9mm handgun in Ohio in 2011, according to the ureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Mr. James has five prior arrests in New York City and three in New Jersey, NYPD officials said.

Mr. James had posted several rambling videos to YouTube making vague threats of violence and discussing New York City’s mental-health services and crime on the subway, a police official confirmed. In one video posted about a month ago, Mr. James said he felt like killing people after he was treated for mental-health issues. He said New York City’s mental-health services made his condition worse and that they weren’t equipped to help the city’s homeless population on the subway.

“These are people that were supposed to be helping me. They made me worse,” Mr. James said. “They made me more dangerous than anybody could f -- imagine.” Mr. James also mocked a plan by Mr. Adams to deploy more police officers to the subways to crack down on violence.

Ms. Sewell said Tuesday the police department would increase the mayor’s security detail because of the videos. A spokesman for YouTube said the company took down the channel associated with the suspect for violating the site’s guidelines.

Joseph Pisani contributed to this article.

The Wall Street Journal