Brooklyn shooting update: Frank James ordered to be held behind bars in first federal court appearance

Courtroom sketches have captured the moment Frank James appeared in court for the first time on Thursday, charged with carrying out a terrorist attack on a New York City transit system.

The 62-year-old wore a blue face mask and pale clothing as he sat during the hearing.

Smartphone footage has captured the moment FBI agents raided an apartment in Philadelphia that investigators say was rented by Frank James prior to Tuesday’s attack.

The video, obtained by ABC7, shows agents outside the property on Tuesday night, when Mr James was still on the run.

According to a criminal complaint filed against Mr James, he rented an apartment in Philadelphia for 15 days from March 28 before leaving the property on Monday and driving to Brooklyn to allegedly carry out the subway attack.

An empty magazine for a Glock handgun, a Taser, a high-capacity rifle magazine, and a blue smoke cannister were all recovered from the property, the complaint says.

Grabs from surveillance footage, submitted as evidence in the criminal complaint against Frank James, appears to show the suspect’s movements before and after the attack.

At 4.11am on 12 April - four hours before the attack - surveillance cameras picked up the U-Haul van allegedly rented by Mr James driving over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge from Staten Island to Brooklyn.

At around 6.12am, a man believed to be Mr James was seen on a surveillance camera located at West 7th Street and Kings Highway in Brooklyn leaving the U-Haul van on foot.

He was wearing a yellow hard hat and an orange construction vest and was carrying a backpack in his right hand and dragging a rolling bag in his left hand.

The individual matches the description that witnesses gave of the perpetrator of the attack.

A man believed to be Mr James is then seen leaving 25 Street station at around 8.40am on Tuesday.

The station is the next stop along from 36 Street where the attack took place. Mr James allegedly boarded an R train along with a stream of terrified passengers fleeing the scene of the attack and travelled on one stop to 25 Street.

The motive for Tuesday’s terror attack still remains unclear despite the vast amount of evidence prosecutors say ties Frank James to the crime.

Officials said on Wednesday that the investigation was still ongoing to determine the motive behind the terrorist attack with investigators combing through his social media posts.

Mr James posted more than 400 videos on a YouTube channel where he rambled about mental health services, subways, gun violence and racism.

Meanwhile, questions are being asked as to whether the Sunset Park neighbourhood was specifically targeted by the gunman.

Sunset Park is home to a large community of working class Asian and Latin American immigrants.

New York City’s Asian community members have fallen victim to a growing number of hate crimes over the last year - something that many have attributed to the anti-Asian rhetoric pushed by former President Donald Trump during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Frank James appeared to leave the Philadelphia apartment he was renting in a hurry as he left the TV blaring in the home and headed to Brooklyn.

Mr James rented an apartment in the Pennsylvania city for 15 days from 28 March before he picked up a U-Haul van and drove to New York overnight on April 11, according to court documents.

Janet McDaniel, 74, a former caseworker for the Pennsylvania State Department of Public Welfare who manages the property, told the New York Times she went to the apartment on Tuesday and found the television was on, there was food left in the fridge and clothes in the closet.

Ms McDaniel said Mr James had also left behind  a nearly empty suitcase and a pair of scissors.

“At that time, I decided let me get out of here,” she said.

The apartment was raided by FBI agents that night as the manhunt was underway for Mr James.

The items left behind by the gunman at 36 Street station led investigators to Frank James, the criminal complaint revealed.

The suspect left behind the Glock 9mm used in the attack, which prosecutors said was bought by Mr James in Ohio in 2011.

Prosecutors said the suspect also discarded the disguise that he wore during the attack at the station – a yellow hard hat and an orange construction vest.

Inside the vest was a receipt for a storage unit rented in Philadelphia under Mr James’ name, prosecutors said. Inside the unit was ammunition, a silencer and other items.

An individual wearing the disguise was spotted on surveillance cameras leaving the U-Haul van rented under Mr James’ name and heading by foot towards Kings Highway subway station prior to the attack. The individual was wheeling a rolling bag and holding a backpack.

A man said to be Mr James was then caught on camera without the disguise leaving 25 Street station minutes after the attack, with investigators saying he jumped onto an R train and travelled one stop to flee the scene.

Also left behind at 36 Street station were two bags matching those seen in the surveillance footage.

The first contained, besides the firearm, a plastic container containing gasoline, a torch, keys for the U-Haul van, and multiple bank cards registered under Mr James’ name, according to court filings. The second bag contained fireworks.

Francisco Puebla, who manages a hardware store in Manhattan’s East Village neighbourhood, helped New York police nab Brooklyn subway shooting suspect Frank James, and he told The Independent about how it went down.

At first, when the man walked by the shop, Mr Puebbla hesitated.

“I said no I’m not gonna call because I’m not 100 per cent it’s him. I don’t want to put this person in trouble if I’m not 100 per cent sure,” he said.

But then a police car stopped nearby, and the shopkeeper saw his moment. “I didn’t think twice. I just ran to the police car. I told the police officer what I saw. They said, ‘no problem, we’ll take care of it.’ They went right after him to the next block. That’s how they got him,” Mr Puebla said.

Read Richard Hall’s full account of how a chance encounter helped police find the suspected killer.

Investigators are digging through the vast YouTube archives of suspected Brooklyn subway shooter Frank James, who is now in custody.

In one video from March, Mr James complained about conditions on the subway and took aim at New York city mayor Eric Adams, a former police leader who ran on a campaign that emphasised public order and safety.

“What are you doing, brother?” he said. “Every car I went to was loaded with homeless people. It was so bad, I couldn’t even stand.”

The mayor has vowed to increase the police presence on subways, though some are questioning whether more police truly would’ve stopped someone like Frank James.

John Bowden has this look at what the mayor is planning, and where it fits into past public safety efforts.

We’ve been taught, explicitly by police and implicitly by dozens of cop shows, that police spend their time catching murderers. In reality, they devote 4 percent of their time to violent crime. As Alex Vitale, the coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College, said in an interview, “The vast majority of police officers make one felony arrest a year. If they make two, they’re cop of the month.”

Joshua Potash has this opinion column looking into the rhetoric and the reality of what New York’s police force really does—and where it falls short.

As police hunted for Brooklyn subway shooting suspect Frank James, New Yorkers got a shocking push alert on their phone, which blared a warning siren.

WANTED FOR BROOKLYN SUBWAY SHOOTING: FRANK JAMES, BLACK MALES, 62 YEARS OLD. ANY INFORMATION CAN BE DIRECTED TO NYPD TIPS AT 800-577-TIPS (8477). MORE INFO & PHOTO: NYC.GOV/NOTIFYNYC

Such “reverse 911” or Amber Alert warnings are usually used in cases of severe weather, public-health, and missing children, but this appeared to be the first time New York ever used one for an ongoing manhunt, alarming citisens that the shooter might be nearby and raising legal concerns, according to Juliette Kayyem, former assistant secretary of homeland security during the Obama administration.

“If you sort of cross this bridge, as New York has done—and done this for a non-child case, a non-Amber case—what are their standards going to be?” she told The Atlantic. “And that’s worth asking. Because you couldn’t do it every time there was a shooting.”