The New York Police Department has identified Frank James as a ‘person of interest’ in the Brooklyn subway attack that injured more than 20 people on Tuesday when chaos unfolded in the morning rush-hour, officials said.
“More than 20 people were left injured – ten were reportedly hit directly by the gunfire while 13 more people suffered from smoke inhalation or were otherwise injured,” authorities have said. The person of interest – Frank James – appears to have posted dozens of videos on YouTube in recent years, which even included threats to the New York mayor Eric Adams. And now the mayor’s personal security has been intensified.
The police described Frank James as 62 years old, with addresses in Philadelphia and Wisconsin. “He is a person of interest in the shooting that took place on the N train in Brooklyn Tuesday morning,” police said on Twitter.Frank James reportedly runs a YouTube page named “prophet oftruth88697” which has over 700 subscribers. The prolific YouTuber has posted dozens of videos on YouTube so far. The video that mentioned Adams was posted on March 1, where he describes Mayor Adams as ‘most dangerous man’, a US-based reporter Katie McQue wrote in a tweet.
“There were some concerning social media posts police believe may be connected to James,” NYPD commissioner Keechant Sewell was quoted as saying by several US media outlets.“He mentions homelessness, he mentioned New York, and he does mention Mayor Adams, and as a result of that abundance of caution, we’re going to heighten his security detail,” Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said as per NY Post.Apart from homelessness, James kept on saying in a March 1 video that even with numerous police officers deployed to the subway, He would ‘still get away’ with crimes. “He (NY mayor) can’t stop no crime in no subways. He may slow it down but he ain’t stopping it,” Frank James said in an hour-long video posted on his alleged channel. “That means you’d have to have police in every station and that’s just not possible,” he added.
In his YouTube videos, the 62-year-old claimed that he was diagnosed with several mental health issues back in 1980. He also said that he was admitted in the city’s mental health treatment where ‘some kind of violence’ was going on. He also confessed that he was using ‘illegal narcotics’ during his treatment in the YouTube video which is now under officials’ radar.
