Written by Jonah E. Bromwich, Rebecca Davis O’Brien and Chelsia Rose Marcius
The man whom the police have identified as a person of interest in the subway attack in Brooklyn appears to have posted dozens of videos on social media in recent years — lengthy rants in which he expressed a range of harshly bigoted views and, more recently, criticised the policies of New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams.
The man, Frank R James, 62, has addresses in Wisconsin and Philadelphia, the police said. He is the subject of a search effort as investigators seek to determine any connection he may have had to the shooting at a Brooklyn subway station on Tuesday morning.
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He was not named as a suspect, and the police identify someone as a person of interest when they believe the individual may have information related to a crime. But New York’s police commissioner, Keechant Sewell, said that citizens should call with any information they had on James.
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Two law enforcement officials said that a credit card with James’ name on it had been found at the scene of the shooting, as had a key to a van that James had rented. It appeared that James had rented the van in Philadelphia sometime over the last several days, driven it close to the subway line where the attack occurred and abandoned it there, one official said. The van was found by the police late Tuesday afternoon.
Separately, the authorities offered up to $50,000 in reward money for information leading to the arrest and indictment of a suspect in the attack.
The police released a screenshot of James taken from a YouTube video posted by a channel belonging to the username prophetoftruth88.
A photo of the van that police say is connected with the shooting at a subway station as law enforcement officers conduct an investigation in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, New York, US, April 12, 2022. (Reuters)
The videos featured a man — who appeared to be the same man in a picture released by the police — delivering extended tirades, many of them overtly concerned with race and violence, often tying those subjects in with current events, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the policies of Adams. Two law enforcement officials said that James was the person featured in the channel’s videos.
In a video posted to YouTube on March 1, the person featured in the video criticised Mayor Eric Adams by name for recently announced policies addressing public safety in the subways, which focused on homeless people. The man in the video was particularly mocking toward the idea of social services, as he spoke in front of an array of photos which he said belonged to people who had tried to help him.
In a long, frequently digressive and bigoted rant, the man in the video elaborated on the ease of committing crime in the subway, saying that even with numerous police officers deployed to the subway, “I’d still get off.”
“He can’t stop no crime in no subways,” the man said, using multiple expletives. “He may slow it down but he ain’t stopping it.”
“That means you’d have to have police in every station and that’s just not possible,” he added.
Sewell said at the news conference Tuesday that Adams’ security detail would be increased in light of the videos.
Another video on the channel, posted in 2020, appeared to have been taken in New York’s subways. In that video, the person holding the camera simply trains it on a crowded subway car.
Officials said that consumer-grade fireworks, gasoline and two unused smoke grenades had been recovered from the scene of the shooting, and a photograph circulated on social media Tuesday appeared to show the fireworks, along with other material.
William Weimer, a vice president at Phantom Fireworks, said that a man named Frank James from Milwaukee had purchased several brands of the fireworks seen in the photo from the Phantom Fireworks’ showroom outside Racine, Wisconsin, in June 2021.
