When Frank James deployed two smoke grenades on a Brooklyn subway and then opened fire on passengers on Tuesday, nearly 30 people were injured. The mainstream media and liberal politicians have seized the event to call for greater “gun control” but have largely overlooked the actual facts of the case.
While many details of the shooting, the shooter, and his motives are not yet known at this early stage, there is much that is known.
The Attack
On Tuesday, April 12, an attacker now believed to be Frank James — a 62-year-old black nationalist with a lengthy criminal record spanning multiple states — boarded a northbound N train on the New York City Subway in Brooklyn. At approximately 8:24 a.m., he donned a gas mask and threw two smoke grenades and then pulled a Glock 17 9mm pistol and began shooting passengers who were blinded, confused, and panicked by the smoke from the grenades.
Twenty-nine people were injured — 10 of them by gunfire. After firing approximately 33 rounds, the attacker fled the scene along with many of his victims. A key that was left at the scene led police to a U-Haul van that had been rented in Philadelphia and left near the attack. Credit-card records showed that James had rented the van. Video from the subway helped identify James as the attacker.
The Arrest
On Wednesday, James called a tip-line established for information about the attack. He told police he knew he was wanted and would turn himself in at a McDonald’s at Sixth Street and First Avenue in the East Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan. When police arrived at the McDonald’s, James was not there, but was located nearby by police and arrested. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York has charged James with committing an act of terrorism on a mass-transit system.
Authorities say they believe James acted alone.
The Attacker
Frank James was born in New York City in 1959, but has spent most of his 62 years drifting from city to city across multiple states. He has addresses listed in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Ohio, and has arrest records in New York and New Jersey. His arrests include charges of possession of burglary tools, a criminal sex act, criminal tampering, and making terroristic threats. In that last charge, from the mid-1990s, James was convicted on a lesser charge of harassment. His sentence was probation and counseling.
According to his social-media posts — mostly Facebook and YouTube — James is an advocate of black nationalism, black supremacy, and black separatism. In many videos posted over a period of years, James rants about whites, Hispanics, Jews, and blacks who do not share his black supremacist views. He compared the “plight” of black Americans to Auschwitz and said, “the seed is already planted for a Nazi party to rise in this country again and I believe it will.” He also approvingly predicted a “race war” in the United States and said that “white people and black people should not have any contact with each other.”
Indicating his violent plans, he described 9/11 as “the most beautiful day in the history of this country.” And he appears to have planned his subway attack, taking video surveillance of subways as research for his plan. As the New York Times reported:
The police released a screenshot of Mr. James taken from a YouTube video posted by a channel belonging to the username prophetoftruth88.
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 Mr. Adams. Two law enforcement officials said that Mr. 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 criticized Mayor Eric Adams by name for recently announced policies addressing public safety in the subways, which focused on homeless people.
Ms. Sewell said at the news conference Tuesday that Mr. Adams’s 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.
In a video posted March 23 — less than three weeks before the attack — James uses a news segment on recent subway crime as a pretext for not-so-veiled threats. As Rolling Stone reports:
In a March 2 video named “TOLD YOU SO,” James uses a news segment on recent subway attacks as a segue into an attack on Mayor Adams’ policies against crime and homelessness, seemingly implying that his struggles are a direct result of the failures of New York City social services.
“These are the people that was supposed to be helping me. They made me worse,” he says, gesturing to a computer screen opened to a photo file named “THEM HOSE,” which appears to display headshots of employees of New Jersey’s Bridgeway Behavioral Health Services — an organization James references in numerous videos. “They made me f[***]ing worse. They made me more dangerous than I could ever — than anything, anyone could ever f[***]ing imagine. These are the people that Eric Adams wants to send out to help the homeless and whatever the case may be. It ain’t gonna happen.”
Social-media accounts belonging to James have been closed in the wake of the attack, but the archived versions and quotes given above clearly show that he is a man with deep hatred for white people who hoped to do his part to instigate a race war that would drive America to a separation of races.
The Motive
While it is impossible to know the inner workings of the mind of anyone — especially someone as deranged as James — it is clear from his posts and videos that James was driven by his hatred of anyone other than black people who shared his views on black supremacy and black separatism.
And while the mainstream media busy themselves focusing on the fact that he used a gun in the attack, they omit the relevant fact that the vast majority of gun owners never attack anyone. The blame for this attack lies in the dark recesses of the warped mind of the man who committed the attack. And to put in the for-what-it’s-worth column, his mind was warped by the same anti-white, black victim narrative that drives much of the reporting of mainstream media.
So, as this attack is used for renewed calls for “gun control,” the reality is that in New York City — where gun laws are so restrictive — James was almost guaranteed to be the only person on that subway car armed with a gun. This is what is known as a target-rich environment. And in the absence of a gun, James could easily have used explosives, a knife, or a baseball bat to accomplish his sick objective.
This is a developing story and The New American will be following it closely.
