‘I saw people crying, screaming for their life’: Brooklyn residents in shock after rush hour subway shooting

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Danny Mastrogiorgio had just dropped his four-year-old son off at school and was waiting for a train to go to work when a scene of chaos unfolded in front of him. As a train pulled into the platform at 25 Street station in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park, crowds of people poured out of the carriage in panic.

“I saw people running up the stairs, running down the street. A guy came out waving his arms, trying to get the cops to come down,” the Brooklyn resident told The Independent.

“Eventually a bunch of ambulances pulled up. I saw them take one guy with a leg wound. They had him in the middle of the street there before the ambulance got him,” he added.

It was at the stop before, at the peak of early morning rush hour, that a gunman wearing a gas mask threw a smoke canister and opened fire on a train carriage filled with people.

At least 29 people were injured in the shooting, which sent shockwaves through a city that has witnessed a rise in violent crime and subway attacks as it emerges from a crippling pandemic.

The gunman, who escaped from the scene and is still on the run from police, opened fire while on board a train car as it approached 36th Street station just before 8.30am. Videos filmed on the train showed people desperately trying to escape the shooting to the next car, only to find that the doors were locked.

Another video showed people running out onto the platform as the train arrived at 36th Street while smoke billowed out from the door. Some passengers had gunshot wounds to their legs.

Witnesses described a scene of confusion. Dozens of people ran up the stairs and onto 4th Avenue, a main road that runs through the Sunset Park neighbourhood.

Haitham Taher, a 20-year-old flight instructor, was on his way to drop his 12-year-old brother at school when he came across the scene outside 36th Street station.

“I saw crying people, yelling and screaming for their life,” he said. “I asked a couple of people what’s wrong, what happened, and they told me there was a shooting.

“I was nervous about whether to take him home or to school,” he said. “I took my brother a safer way. We ran all the way down to 3rd Avenue.”

Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said that the attack was not being investigated as terrorism, but that she was "not ruling out anything." FBI agents and NYPD counter-terrorism officers were present at the scene in the hours after the attack.

Officials said a manhunt was underway for the suspect, who was described as being a Black man about 5ft 5in tall, having a heavy build, wearing a green construction vest, and possibly driving a U-Haul truck with Arizona licence plates. Police helicopters buzzed above the scene as hundreds of police and first responders gathered on the closed off street where the attack took place.

Late on Tuesday 12 April, police named Frank R James as a person of interest in the case, though authorities were careful not to suggest that Mr James carried out the shooting.

As the manhunt continued into Wednesday, Mayor Eric Adams announced that Mr James is now considered a suspect.

Police said 33 shots were fired in the shooting, and announced a $50,000 reward for information about the crime.

The shooting comes amid a fierce debate over public safety in New York following a spate of shootings and subway attacks. In January, 40-year-old Michelle Go was pushed in front of an R train as it approached a 42nd Street platform in Manhattan.

Earlier this month, a 12-year-old boy named Kade Lewin was killed in the East Flatbush neighbourhood of Brooklyn when the car he was in was hit by stray bullets. A few days later, a 61-year-old Juana Esperanza Soriano De-Perdomo was killed, also by a stray bullet.

While murders have declined, shootings have risen in New York in the first quarter of 2022, according to police figures. There were 296 shootings so far this year, up until 3 April, compared to 260 last year. Violent crimes have also increased year-on-year, with robberies up by more than 30 per cent and felony assault by 12 per cent. The NYPD recently announced that crimes on the city’s transit system are up 70 per cent compared to last year.

Governor Kathy Hochul told a news conference that gun crime “has to end.”

"We say: No more. No more mass shootings. No more disrupting lives. No more creating heartbreak for people just trying to live their lives as normal New Yorkers.”

Mayor Adams, a former police officer who campaigned on a plan to bring down crime, said in the aftermath of the attack that gun crime was a national problem that required a comprehensive response.

“We’re facing a problem that is hitting our entire nation right now and that is why this is a national response. We need a national response to this issue,” he told CNN.

“As I stated over and over again, there are many rivers that feed the sea of violence in our city and in our country — let’s dam each one of them and some of that damming is going to come from assistance from the lawmakers throughout state and country," he said.

Mr Adams, who is isolating following a positive COVID-19 test on Sunday, said that law enforcement had taken 1,800 guns off the streets of New York City in the first three months of his term as mayor, 10 per cent of which were so-called ghost guns — untraceable firearms that don’t have serial numbers and can be built at home.

The Biden administration announced a crackdown on ghost guns on Monday, bringing their regulation more in line with traditional guns.

“These guns are weapons of choice for many criminals,” Joe Biden said. “We’re going to do everything we can to deprive them of that choice.”

In the aftermath of the attack, residents of Sunset Park expressed shock at the violence in their neighbourhood, which is home to predominantly Hispanic and Asian communities.

Fuad Aldalali, who owns a bodega one block from 36th Street station, ran out of his shop and saw a street full of people. He said the neighbourhood is usually very safe, but things had deteriorated during the pandemic.

“My kids are in school, now I’m scared to send them to the subway. I have to take them in my hands,” he said.

“Right now, people in the neighbourhood are scared,” he added. “It’s not normal.”

Mr Mastrogiorgio, a lifelong New Yorker whose son was still in lockdown at his school just a few blocks from the shooting, said he was “disturbed” by the incident.

“We take this train every day. I would have been on the train with him,” he said.