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NEW YORK (AP) — A person who sprayed a New York Metropolis subway automobile with bullets throughout rush hour, wounding 10 individuals and sparking a citywide manhunt, was sentenced Thursday to life in jail.
Frank James, 64, pleaded responsible earlier this yr to terrorism prices within the April 12, 2022, mass taking pictures aboard a Manhattan-bound prepare. He obtained a life sentence on 10 counts and 10 years for an eleventh depend.
Prosecutors had requested for the life sentence, saying James spent years rigorously planning the taking pictures with a view to “inflict most harm.”
James’ attorneys had requested for a lowered sentence of 18 years, saying he didn’t intend to kill anybody and suffered from severe psychological sickness.
Previous to the sentencing, among the taking pictures victims spoke in courtroom whereas others submitted letters that had been learn out loud.
Disguised as a development employee, James waited till the prepare was between stations, denying his targets an opportunity to flee. Then he ignited a number of smoke bombs and unleashed a barrage of bullets from a 9 mm handgun at panicked riders within the crowded prepare automobile.
The assault, carried out because the prepare pulled right into a station in Sundown Park, Brooklyn, wounded victims 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 looked for him for greater than a day. They recognized James as a suspect comparatively shortly, utilizing a key to a rented shifting van left behind on the bloodied subway automobile. He was ultimately arrested in Manhattan’s East Village after calling a police tip line to show himself in.
“The truth that nobody was killed by the defendant’s 32 gunshots can solely be described as luck versus the defendant’s intentional alternative,” Brooklyn prosecutors wrote in a memo to U.S. District Choose William Kuntz.
The assault surprised New Yorkers, heightened anxiousness about security within the transit system and prompted native officers so as to add extra surveillance cameras and police to the trains.
Earlier than the taking pictures, James, who’s Black, posted dozens of movies on-line below the moniker “Prophet of Doom,” ranting about race, violence, his struggles with psychological sickness and a bunch of unnamed forces he claimed had been out to get him.
In a single 2019 video, James alluded to a pending battle in his hometown, stating that “it’s going to be very attention-grabbing what occurs in New York with me.” By that point, prosecutors allege, James was already within the means of planning the subway taking pictures.
When James pleaded responsible to the terrorism prices earlier this yr, he mentioned he solely meant to trigger severe bodily damage, not loss of life.
His legal professional, Mia Eisner-Grynberg, instructed that whereas James could have initially deliberate to kill individuals, he modified his thoughts within the warmth of the second.
“In a society the place, sadly, we be taught almost day by day that mass shooters who intend to kill readily obtain their objectives, it’s way more possible that Mr. James lacked that particular intent than that he merely failed in his mission,” Eisner-Grynberg wrote in a sentencing memo.
Referencing the defendant’s abusive childhood within the Bronx and his ongoing struggles with each alcoholism and paranoid schizophrenia, she added, “Mr. James shouldn’t be evil. He’s very, very sick.”
Prosecutors, nevertheless, mentioned the trajectory of the bullets confirmed that James aimed on the “heart mass” of riders for max lethality. They mentioned James solely stopped firing his semi-automatic Glock pistol as a result of the gun jammed.
James has been held with out bail for the previous 17 months on the Metropolitan Detention Heart.
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