Frank Robert James, 62, faces multiple charges, including terrorism against a public transportation system, after he fired two smoke bombs and then opened fire on a subway car at Sunset Park on Tuesday morning, injuring at least 12 people. Two law enforcement sources told the Daily Beast that James called the Crime Stoppers from the fast food restaurant, but left before police arrived. Three “Good Samaritans”, one of whom appeared to be a 21-year-old camera installer named Zach, spotted him a few blocks away and lowered police officers, officials said. “My New York colleagues, we got it,” New York Mayor Eric Adams told a news conference Wednesday, announcing his arrest. A criminal lawsuit filed Wednesday offered a glimpse into the amazing 30-hour hunt to locate, locate and finally handcuff James. “This was a great example of local and federal law enforcement coming together to stop an individual from creating even greater disaster,” said the former NYPD Det. Sgt. Joseph Giacalone, who now teaches at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, told The Daily Beast. James fled the scene but left behind a wealth of evidence, including a 9mm Glock, three large-capacity magazines, a backpack, a bag of fireworks and smoke canisters, an ax, a bottle of petrol spray and card that he used to rent a U-Haul truck in Philadelphia. The complaint states that he also left an orange jacket with reflective tape on the subway platform with a receipt in one of the pockets for a storage unit in Philadelphia – which became crucial for his recognition. “Records from Lyft revealed that James visited the storage facility at about 6:17 p.m. “on April 11, 2022, the day before the attack,” the complaint states. The worst armed construction equipment as he boarded the subway on Tuesday morning.
NYPD
Investigators say they searched the storage unit and found “9mm ammunition, a 9mm pistol barrel with a thread that allows a silencer or suppressor [sic] for attachment, 0.223 caliber targets and ammunition, which are used with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle “. In an apartment that James rented in Philadelphia for 15 days last month, investigators say they found “an empty magazine for a Glock pistol, a teaser, a large-capacity rifle magazine and a blue smoke canister. [sic]. » As authorities searched the apartment Tuesday night, a MetroCard card purchased with the credit card was scanned at a Brooklyn subway station, a law enforcement source told the Daily Beast. A U-Haul rented in Philadelphia a few days ago with the same credit card was also found in Brooklyn, about five miles from the scene of the shooting. As soon as the investigators found out the identity of James, they dug up his story. The head of NYPD detectives, James Essig, told reporters Wednesday that James had made nine previous arrests in New York between 1992 and 1998, including possession of burglary tools, sexual assault, robbery and theft. He also has a criminal record in Wisconsin and New Jersey, where he has lived in the past. None of these offenses were a felony, meaning the 9mm Glock he allegedly used in Tuesday’s attack was legally acquired. The Columbus Police Department confirmed to The Daily Beast that it bought the gun online 11 years ago in Ohio. To comply with state laws, he sent it to a local pawnshop named Lev’s, which is a federal firearms licensee, said Jeff Brant, an officer in the department’s property recovery unit. “The pawnshop was just the federal part of the gun license where the guy sent them off the Internet,” Bradt said. “The pawnshop filed the documents but did not sell the weapon.” (A manager at Lev’s Pawnshop denied this, telling the Daily Police that “the police are lying.”) Bradt said James had 12 pawnshops in Columbus by 2015. He sold everything from jewelry, a saw, a basic gun, binoculars and a heater. As authorities dug up James’s story, they found several videos on Youtube and on Facebook in which he threatened with violence and chanted about his mental health struggles, according to the criminal complaint. In YouTube videos posted before the attack, James complained about the city’s subway and homeless riders. “How are you brother; What’s going on with this homeless situation? ” asked the mayor. “Every car I went to[s] loaded with homeless. “It was so bad I could not even stand it.” But his exact motive is still unclear, Essig said on Wednesday. James was muttering to himself moments before the attack, but police only know he made a strange observation as he wore a gas mask and pulled cans of smoke out of his wheeled luggage. After placing a can of tobacco, a witness asked, “What did you do?” Esig said. “He goes, ‘Oops,’ and then he pops it, then he shakes his gun and shoots 33 times.” In the social media videos, which were reviewed by The Daily Beast before being removed from YouTube, James made long speeches about race, politics and gun violence, including repeated expressions of contempt for blacks and of his desire to “kill people.” In a video addressed to Mayor Eric Adams, he said he had gone through the city’s mental health system and experienced a kind of emotional violence that would make someone “go get a gun and shoot moms.” “I will send a message to the black sector, especially to Facebook. Including —especially— my family. No, no, you will not like it. Yes, it will be bad. It will be ugly. “It will be completely disgusting, in a way,” James said in a Facebook video in July 2019. “But it will be real, from the events as I have experienced them. You see, I have come to a conclusion. And I have asked this question in many videos on YouTube. Eh, what are we? Black, let’s call ourselves. Are we a people? Or are we just a bunch [N-word]? I came to the conclusion, in fact quite some time ago, that in reality, we are just a bunch of fucking [N-word]. » He also expressed his hatred for Jews in a Facebook video in July 2019, calling them “the ultimate fucking predator.” “He is the top predator in this kind of society … Look at who really rules this country, who controls the wealth in this nation: the Jews,” he said. In the days leading up to the subway attack, he videotaped himself flying from Philadelphia to New York in a U-Haul, stopping at a hotel in New Jersey. “Here I am, the Best Western in Bordentown,” said James. “Here I am, back, back, back to where all my problems started.” In a video posted on YouTube on Monday, James spent several minutes saying “he does not want to go to fucking jail” and while he wants to “kill people”, he can not handle jail. Kayla Miller, who lived next to James in the same apartment building in Milwaukee, described him in The Daily Beast on Wednesday as “definitely a weird neighbor.” James will be arraigned in federal court in Brooklyn on Thursday. He faces life in prison if convicted.
