NEW YORK — Now in custody, investigators turned their attention to a possible motive Thursday, a day after police arrested the man accused of shooting 10 people and injuring more than a dozen others in an alleged attack. planned rush hour on the Brooklyn subway.
The suspect is expected to make his first appearance in federal court in Brooklyn later that day as federal, state and local law enforcement agencies work to piece together details of the 62-year-old’s life.
An individual with an erratic work history, arrests for a string of mostly low-level crimes, a storage locker with more ammunition, and hours of rambling, bigoted, profanity-filled videos on his YouTube channel that point to a rage deep and latent
James posted dozens of videos ranting about race, violence and his struggle with mental illness. One stands out because of his relative calm: a silent shot of a packed New York City subway car in which he holds up his finger to point at passengers, one by one.
“This nation was born in violence, is kept alive by violence or the threat of it, and is going to die a violent death,” James says in a video in which he takes on the nickname “Prophet of perdition.”
After a 30-hour manhunt, James was arrested without incident after an informant, who police thought was James himself, said he could be found near a McDonald’s in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan. Mayor Eric Adams triumphantly proclaimed “We got it!” after arrest.
Police said their top priority was getting the suspect, who has since been charged, off the streets while they investigate their biggest unanswered question: Why did he do what he did?
A great trove of evidence, they said, is his YouTube videos. She seems to have opinions on just about everything: racism in America, New York City’s new mayor, the state of mental health services, 9/11, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and even black women.
A federal criminal complaint cited one in which James ranted about too many homeless people on the subway and blamed the mayor of New York City.
“What are you doing, brother?” he told her in the video posted on March 27. “Every car I went in was full of homeless people. It was so bad I couldn’t even stand up.”
James later criticized the treatment of African-Americans in an April 6 video cited in the complaint, saying, “So the message to me is: I should have gotten a gun and started shooting.”
In a video posted a day before the attack, James criticizes crime against African Americans, saying things would only change if certain people were “stomped on, kicked and tortured” outside of their “comfort zone.”
Surveillance cameras saw James entering the underground system’s turnstiles Tuesday morning, dressed as a maintenance or construction worker in a yellow hard hat and orange work jacket with reflective tape.
Police say other passengers heard him say just “oops” when he detonated a smoke grenade in a crowded subway car pulling into a station. He then activated a second smoke grenade and began firing, police said. In the smoke and chaos that followed, police say James got away by slipping onto an R train going in the opposite direction and exited after the first stop.
Left at the scene were the gun, extended magazines, an axe, detonated and unexploded smoke grenades, a black trash can, a rolling cart, gasoline and the key to a U-Haul truck, police said.
That clue led investigators to James, and clues to a life of setbacks and anger as he bounced between factory and maintenance jobs, been laid off at least twice, moved between Milwaukee, Philadelphia, New Jersey and New York.
Investigators said James had 12 prior arrests in New York and New Jersey between 1990 and 2007. The nine prior arrests in New York City between 1992 and 1998 include robbery possession, criminal sexual act and theft of service.
In New Jersey, James has three other arrests in 1991, 1992 and 2007, including for breaking and entering, theft and disorderly conduct, police said during Wednesday’s news conference.
James had no felony convictions and was not prohibited from purchasing or possessing a firearm. Police said the gun used in the attack was purchased legally from an Ohio pawn shop in 2011. A close-up image of the gun he bought showed he tried to remove the serial number, investigators said. But agents used that number to trace the purchase back to him.
A search of James’ storage unit and apartment in Philadelphia turned up at least two types of ammunition, including the type used with an AR-15-style assault rifle, a taser, and a blue smoke canister.
Police said James was born and raised in New York City. In his videos, he said he finished an auto shop course in 1983 and then worked as a gear machinist at Curtiss-Wright, an aerospace manufacturer in New Jersey, until 1991, when he got a double whammy of bad news: He was laid off from his job. and, shortly after, his father, with whom he had lived in New Jersey, died.
Records show that James filed a lawsuit against the aerospace company in federal court shortly after losing his job alleging racial discrimination, but a judge dismissed it a year later. She says in a video, without offering details, that “I couldn’t get justice for what I went through.”
A Curtiss-Wright spokesman did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment.
James describes being in and out of various mental health facilities, including two in the Bronx in the 1970s.
“Mr. Mayor, let me tell you that I am a victim of your mental health program in New York City,” James says in a video earlier this year, adding that he is “full of hate, anger and bitterness.”
James says he was later a patient at Bridgeway House, a mental health facility in New Jersey, though that couldn’t be immediately confirmed. Messages seeking comment left at the facility were not returned.
“My goal at Bridgeway in 1997 was to get off Social Security and go back to work,” he says in a video, adding that he enrolled in college and took a course in computer-aided design and manufacturing.
James says he eventually got a job at telecommunications giant Lucent Technologies in Parsippany, New Jersey, but says he ended up being laid off and returned to Bridgeway House, this time not as a patient but as a handyman. He sent a message seeking comment to Lucent Technologies.
“I just want to work. I want to be a productive person,” he said.
Touches of that serious, feisty man appeared after James’ parked car was hit in Milwaukee. Eugene Yarbrough, pastor of Mt. Zion Wings of Glory Church of God in Christ, next door to James’s apartment, said James was shocked that the pastor admitted hitting the car. Neither James nor anyone else was there to see the accident. And James called him to tell him.
“I just couldn’t believe it would be him,” Yarbrough said. “But who knows what people will do?”
Police and federal agents said James has not had a steady job or a fixed address for the past several years. After renting the U-Haul van Monday afternoon in Philadelphia, using his own name, he apparently slept in it, as police removed the bedding, pillows and chairs hours after the shooting.
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