The man suspected of having fired in the New York subway at rush hour on Tuesday morning, injuring 23, including 10 by bullets, was arrested on Wednesday, reported several American media citing police sources.
The suspect, who had wreaked havoc on the subway the day before, was found in Manhattan, according to NBC television.
“We will continue to tighten the trap around him and stop him”, promised in the morning the Democratic mayor of New York, Eric Adams, expected at the turn on the theme of the fight against crime, he who had made it a campaign theme to be elected last year.
The police had been looking for more than 24 hours for Frank James, a 62-year-old African American, accused of having repeatedly fired on an N line train at the 36 station.and street in south Brooklyn.
On Wednesday, New Yorkers received an “urgent” message on their phones asking them to deliver any useful information to investigators. A $50,000 reward had been put on the table.
Active on YouTube
The man had a YouTube page, called “prophetoftruth88” (prophet of truth), deleted Wednesday morning for “violation of the community rules” of the site. He posted multiple videos there where we see him launching long tirades, sometimes rambling and vehement, in which he evokes racial issues, insecurity in New York, especially on the subway, and attacks homosexual people, or new mayor Eric Adams.
As the hunt for the shooter, described as “dangerous” the day before, continued, millions of New Yorkers took to the subway, one of the largest networks in the world, to go to work, some posting selfies on the social networks to show that life was getting back to normal.
“We don’t get up in the morning thinking we won’t get home or that we’re going to hurt ourselves on the way there. It’s New York, the city never stops,” Sony Washington, a 35-year-old machinist, told AFP, while worrying that the suspect was still in the wild at the time. .
“I always pay attention to what surrounds me since September 11 [2001]. But there have been more incidents on the docks recently, so I’m paying more attention,” added Laura Swalm, 49, who lives in neighboring New Jersey.
33 bullets fired
Tuesday morning, around 8:30 a.m., at a time when the metro trains are crowded, the individual, who was wearing a gas mask, lit two devices which smoked the car, then shot at the passengers while the train was entering the station.
“We were really lucky that it wasn’t much more serious,” said New York Police Chief (NYPD) Keechant Sewell, summing up the authorities’ relief. The suspect fired 33 rounds.
“All you see is black smoke, and I turned to the right, and I saw this guy with a mask,” testified on CNN one of the victims, Hourari Benkada, since his hospital bed.
“The shooting lasted about a minute […]. I’ve never heard so many shots come out of a handgun… […] He probably had extended magazines or another firearm, ”added this man, hit in the knee. At the scene, investigators found a handgun and three magazines.
The attack came as New York has faced a spike in crime since the COVID-19 pandemic, with the number of homicides rising from 319 in 2019 to 488 in 2021, although the annual toll remains strong below the more than 2000 per year recorded in the early 1990s.
Shootings have also remained on the rise since the start of the year, going from 260 to 296 in the first quarter of 2022, according to police figures, some of which have made an impression, such as the death on Friday of a 17-year-old girl. , shot dead outside a high school in the Bronx.