A man who shot at a New York City subway car during rush hour, injuring 10, and prompting a worldwide manhunt was given a life sentence on Thursday.
In relation to the April 12, 2022, mass shooting on a train headed for Manhattan, Frank James, 64, entered a guilty plea earlier this year. He was given a 10-year term on one offense and a life sentence for the other 10.
The life sentence was requested by the prosecution because they said James had spent years meticulously preparing the shooting in order to “inflict maximum damage.”
James’ defenders had requested a sentence reduction to 18 years, arguing that their client had a serious mental disorder and had no intention of killing anyone.
Three witnesses to the incident spoke in court before the sentence was handed out.
Fatim Gjeloshi, 21, who managed to flee the incident unscathed, started speaking into the microphone about the morning of the shooting and that he had forgiven James before he abruptly stopped and sobbed. He remarked, “I can’t do this,” and left the courtroom.
When given the chance to speak, James criticized the country’s social safety net and mental health care system, claiming that it had failed him and other people who were struggling with mental illness and poverty.
On the day of the attack, James pretended to be a construction worker and waited until the train was halfway between stations, preventing his targets from having time to escape. Then he set off several smoke bombs and opened fire with a 9 mm handgun on the terrified passengers in the packed train car.
The attack, which took place as the train approached a station in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, injured people between the ages of 16 and 60.
James casually exited the metro station and disappeared as first responders attended to the casualties. Authorities spent more than a day looking for him. A key to a hired moving van left on the bloody subway vehicle let them swiftly identify James as a suspect. He eventually called a police tip line to turn himself in and was thereafter apprehended in Manhattan’s East Village.
In a report to U.S. District Judge William Kuntz, Brooklyn prosecutors said that the fact that no one was killed by the defendant’s 32 gunfire “can only be described as luck as opposed to the defendant’s intentional choice.”
The attack surprised New Yorkers, increased public transit system safety concerns, and prompted local authorities to install more security cameras and police on the trains.
James, a Black man, posted a large number of videos online before the shooting under the alias “Prophet of Doom,” in which he rants about racism, violence, his battles with mental illness, and a variety of nameless entities he believes are out to harm him.
James hinted at a potential clash in his hometown in a 2019 video when he said, “It’s going to be very interesting what happens in New York with me.” Prosecutors claim that James was already preparing for the subway shooting at that point.
When James admitted admission to the terrorism charges earlier this year, he claimed that he only wanted to cause significant bodily injury, not death.
James may have intended to kill people at first, but he may have altered his mind in the heat of the moment, according to his attorney Mia Eisner-Grynberg.
It is considerably more plausible that Mr. James lacked that precise intent than that he merely failed in his mission, Eisner-Grynberg said in a sentencing memo. “In a society where, unfortunately, we learn nearly every day that organized shooters who aim to kill readily achieve their goals,” she wrote.
She said, “Mr. James is not evil,” alluding to the defendant’s traumatic beginnings in the Bronx and his current battles with alcoholism and paranoid schizophrenia. He is seriously ill.
However, according to the prosecution, James intentionally targeted the “center mass” of the motorcyclists for maximum lethality based on the trajectory of the bullets. They said James’ Glock semi-automatic weapon only stopped firing due to a jam.
James has been detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center for the last 17 months without being granted bail.