By Currents News Staff and Paula Katinas
SUNSET PARK — Police have nabbed the suspect who went on a shooting rampage on a Brooklyn subway train, authorities said. The suspect, identified by police as Frank R. James, 62, was arrested Wednesday — the day after the shootings — in the East Village following a stabbing incident.
“My fellow New Yorkers, we got him. We got him,” Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement.
James was taken into custody without incident, police said.
The suspect was charged in Brooklyn Federal Court with violating a federal law prohibiting terrorism on mass transportation, according to Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
“The government will prove, among other things, that James traveled across a state line in order to commit the offense and transported materials across a state line in aid of the commission of the offense,” Peace said at a press conference at One Police Plaza Wednesday afternoon.
At the same press conference, NYPD officials said that on the day of the shooting, James had entered the subway system at the Kings Highway station on the N line, rode it to 36th Street-Fourth Avenue station and opened fire as the train was entering that station, police said.
Following the shooting, he boarded an R train — the same train many of the fleeing victims got on — and rode to 25th Street, the next stop, where he got off.
James had previously been labeled by police as a person of interest in connection with Tuesday’s violence — meaning that authorities believed he had information about it. But in a series of media interviews on Wednesday morning, Adams said James was believed to be the man responsible for the rampage in which 10 people were shot and at least 13 others were injured.
A $50,000 reward had been offered for information leading to the suspect’s arrest and indictment.
Authorities linked James to the scene because a credit card with his name on it had been left behind at the 36th Street station, along with a key to a U-Haul van he had rented. The van was found on the street eight hours after the shootings.
James, who had addresses in Philadelphia and Wisconsin, apparently rented the van in Philadelphia and it drove to New York, police said.
Police also found other items left behind at the scene, including a handgun, ammunition, a hatchet, fireworks and a liquid believed to be gasoline.
James had posted several troubling videos on YouTube in recent months under the name prophetoftruth88 in which he ranted against Adams and blamed the mayor for not solving the city’s problems, particularly when it comes to the issue of mental illness.
“Mr. Mayor, I’m a victim of your mental program,” he said in one video. “I’m 63 now full of hate, full of anger, full of bitterness.”
Witnesses told police the shooter, wearing a gray sweatshirt and an orange vest, was aboard an N train at 8:24 a.m. on Tuesday. As the train was entering the station, he put on a gas mask, set off a smoke bomb inside the subway car and then opened fire, getting off a total of 33 shots, police said.
None of the victims suffered life-threatening injuries, although at least five were listed in critical condition, authorities said.