USA – After the dramatic attack in the New York subway with shots and at least 23 injuries, an arrested suspect is due to appear in court this Thursday.
The 62-year-old man was arrested in Manhattan on Wednesday. “My fellow New Yorkers, we have him,” said Mayor Eric Adams, who was connected via video from isolation because of a corona infection, at a press conference. “We were able to shrink his world quickly,” added Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell. “He had nowhere else to run to.”
The man, who was born in New York and last lived in Philadelphia and Wisconsin and had previously been arrested several times for other offenses, was to be brought before Judge Roanne Mann in a court in the Brooklyn district this Thursday. He should be charged with a “terrorist or other violent attack” on public transport, the authorities said. If convicted, the man faces life imprisonment. According to initial investigation results, he acted alone. The background to the crime was initially unclear.
The authorities suspect that several publications on social media come from the man. In it he complains, among other things, about New York, Mayor Adams and homelessness. Adams’ police protection was therefore initially increased as a precaution.
The man is accused of opening fire on a subway train in the Brooklyn borough during the morning rush hour on Tuesday. The man was sitting in a back corner in the second car of an N train bound for Manhattan between the 59 St and 36 St stations, authorities said. He wore an orange-green construction worker’s vest, a corona protective mask, a gray hooded sweater and a neon-green construction worker’s helmet. He put on a kind of gas mask, opened two canisters from which smoke or fog streamed, and then opened fire. In total he shot 33 times. At least 23 people were injured, ten of them by gunfire.
After the crime, the man initially fled on another subway. Authorities tracked him down for renting a pickup truck, the keys of which were found at the scene along with, among other things, a semi-automatic handgun, several magazines, a small axe, liquid suspected to be gasoline, and a bag of fireworks. The pickup truck was later found parked in another part of Brooklyn.
With great effort, the police searched for the man, who was first listed as a “person of interest” and then as an official suspect. On Wednesday, the emergency services then got a tip that he was in the East Village in southeast Manhattan. The police found him there. According to US media reports, the suspect also called the police himself. He did not resist when he was arrested. A reward of $50,000 (around €46,000) had previously been offered for information leading to the arrest of the suspect.
The head of the New York transport company, Janno Lieber, thanked the police for their efforts. “Subway riders and all New Yorkers will be able to sleep a little better today.”
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