Police arresting Frank James in April last year Photo /AP
A man who sprayed a New York City subway car with bullets during rush hour, wounding 10 people and sparking a citywide manhunt, was sentenced on Thursday to life in prison.
Frank James, 64, pleaded guilty earlier this year to terrorism charges in the April 12, 2022, mass shooting aboard a Manhattan-bound train. He received a life sentence on 10 charges and 10 years for an 11th charge.
Prosecutors had asked for the life sentence, saying James had pent years carefully planning the shooting to “inflict maximum damage”.
James’ lawyers had asked for a reduced sentence of 18 years, saying he didn’t intend to kill anyone and suffered from serious mental illness.
Before the sentencing, three people who were present at the time of the attack addressed the court.
Fatim Gjeloshi, 21, who escaped the shooting unharmed, recounted the morning of the shooting, saying he forgave James, but then stopped and broke down in tears. “I can’t do this,” he said, and walked out of the courtroom.
Also given an opportunity to speak, James offered a critique of the nation’s mental health system and social safety net, saying the system had failed him and others battling mental illness and poverty.
Disguised as a construction worker on the day of the attack, James waited until the train was between stations, denying his targets a chance to flee. Then he ignited multiple smoke bombs and unleashed a barrage of bullets from a 9mm handgun at panicked riders in the crowded train car.
The attack, carried out as the train pulled into a station in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, wounded people ranging in age from 16 to 60.
As emergency responders tended to the victims, James walked calmly out of the subway station and vanished. Authorities searched for him for more than a day. They identified James as a suspect relatively quickly, using a key to a rented moving van left behind on the bloodied subway car. He was eventually arrested in Manhattan’s East Village after calling a police tip line to turn himself in.
“The fact that no one was killed by the defendant’s 32 gunshots can only be described as luck as opposed to the defendant’s intentional choice,” Brooklyn prosecutors wrote in a memo to US District Judge William Kuntz.
The attack stunned New Yorkers, heightened anxiety about safety in the transit system and prompted local officials to add additional surveillance cameras and police to the trains.
Before the shooting, James, who is black, posted dozens of videos online under the moniker “Prophet of Doom”, ranting about race, violence, his struggles with mental illness and a host of unnamed forces he claimed were out to get him.
In one 2019 video, James alluded to a pending conflict in his home town, stating “it’s going to be very interesting what happens in New York with me”. By that time, prosecutors allege, James was already planning the subway shooting.
When James pleaded guilty to the terrorism charges earlier this year, he said he intended to cause only serious bodily injury, not death.
His lawyer, Mia Eisner-Grynberg, suggested that while James may have initially planned to kill people, he changed his mind in the heat of the moment.
“In a society where, sadly, we learn nearly every day that mass shooters who intend to kill readily achieve their goals, it is far more likely that Mr James lacked that specific intent than that he simply failed in his mission,” Eisner-Grynberg wrote in a sentencing memo.
Referencing the defendant’s abusive childhood in the Bronx and his ongoing struggles with alcoholism and paranoid schizophrenia, she added, “Mr James is not evil. He is very, very ill.”
Prosecutors, however, said the trajectory of the bullets showed James aimed at the “centre mass” of riders for maximum lethality. They said James stopped firing his semi-automatic Glock pistol only because the gun jammed.
James has been held without bail for the past 17 months at the Metropolitan Detention Centre.