NEW YORK (AP) — A person who sprayed the within of a New York Metropolis subway practice with gunfire after which slipped away in a shocked crowd is ready to be sentenced Thursday within the morning rush-hour assault, which wounded 10 individuals and set off a citywide manhunt.
Frank James, 64, pleaded guilty to terrorism charges within the April 12, 2022, mass taking pictures aboard a Manhattan-bound practice.
Prosecutors have requested for a life sentence, saying James spent years rigorously planning the taking pictures to be able to “inflict most harm.”
The gunman’s attorneys have requested for a decreased sentence of 18 years, saying James did not intend to kill anybody and suffered from critical psychological sickness.
Disguised as a building employee, James waited till the practice was between stations, denying his targets an opportunity to flee. Then he ignited a number of smoke bombs and unleashed a barrage of bullets from a 9mm handgun at panicked riders within the crowded practice automobile.
The assault wounded victims ranging in age from 16 to 60 because the practice pulled right into a station in Sundown Park, Brooklyn.
As emergency responders tended to the victims, James walked calmly out of the subway station and vanished. The seek for the gunman lasted for roughly 30 hours. Police recognized James as a suspect comparatively rapidly, utilizing a key to a rented transferring van left behind on the bloodied subway automobile. He was finally arrested in Manhattan’s East Village after calling a police tip line to show himself in.
“The truth that nobody was killed by the defendant’s 32 gunshots can solely be described as luck versus the defendant’s intentional alternative,” Brooklyn prosecutors wrote in a memo to U.S. District Choose William Kuntz.
The assault shocked New Yorkers, heightened anxiety about security within the transit system and prompted native officers so as to add extra surveillance cameras and police to the trains.
Earlier than the taking pictures, James, who’s Black, posted dozens of movies on-line underneath the moniker “Prophet of Doom,” ranting about race, violence, his struggles with psychological sickness and a number of unnamed forces he claimed have been out to get him.
In a single 2019 video, James alluded to a pending battle in his hometown, stating that “it’s going to be very fascinating what occurs in New York with me.” By that point, prosecutors allege, James was already within the means of planning the subway taking pictures.
When James pleaded responsible to the terrorism prices earlier this 12 months, he mentioned he solely supposed to trigger critical bodily harm, not demise.
His legal professional, Mia Eisne-Grynberg, prompt that whereas James could have initially deliberate to kill individuals, he modified his thoughts within the warmth of the second.
“In a society the place, sadly, we study practically each day that mass shooters who intend to kill readily obtain their targets, it’s way more doubtless that Mr. James lacked that particular intent than that he merely failed in his mission,” Eisner-Grynberg wrote in a sentencing memo.
Referencing the defendant’s abusive childhood within the Bronx and his ongoing struggles with each alcoholism and paranoid schizophrenia, she added, “Mr. James isn’t evil. He’s very, very unwell.”
Prosecutors, nevertheless, say the trajectory of the bullets present that James aimed on the “middle mass” of riders for max lethality. They are saying James solely stopped firing his semi-automatic Glock pistol as a result of the gun jammed.
James has spent the previous 17 months held on the Metropolitan Detention Middle with out bail. He was beforehand pressured to seem in court docket after refusing to go away his cell. On Tuesday, Choose Kuntz mentioned U.S. Marshals ought to use all vital drive to be able to produce James for the sentencing.