Subway Shooting Suspect Frank James Denied Bail As Lawyer Requests ‘Psychiatric Evaluation’

Following his Wednesday arrest, Frank James, the suspect in Wednesday’s shooting of 10 people at a subway station in Brooklyn, has been ordered held without bail after being officially arraigned on federal terrorism charges for the brutal attack.

If convicted, he could face as long as life in prison, according to Breon Peace, the US attorney for New York’s Eastern District.

James was finally apprehended in Manhattan’s East Village after a 30-hour manhunt. In his initial court appearance on Thursday, Magistrate Judge Roanne L. Mann ordered that James remain in detention, while James’s attorney has requested that he receive a psychiatric evaluation.

Authorities said James, wearing a construction worker’s helmet and reflective vest, boarded a Manhattan-bound N train in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park section during Tuesday morning’s rush hour. He tossed two smoke grenades onto the floor of the moving train and opened fire with a Glock 17 pistol, firing 33 times, they said. At least 23 people were injured, including 10 from gunfire.

According to the prosecutors’ criminal complaint, issued Thursday, they had asked that James be held without bail because he poses a “severe and ongoing danger to the community.”

“He fired approximately 33 rounds in cold blood at terrified passengers who had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Sara Winik said in the filing. James has a criminal history dating back 30 years whose details “paint a picture of a person with a penchant for defying authority,” she wrote. 

According to police, James escaped by taking a train and walking away at the next stop. He was later linked to the attack after authorities found the key to a rented U-Haul van prosecutors say he rented in Philadelphia on Monday. 

James bought the pistol legally in Ohio back in 2011, according to the criminal complaint. A search of a storage unit registered to James turned up 9-millimeter ammunition and a threaded pistol barrel that allowed a silencer to be attached, targets and .223 caliber ammunition used for an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, prosecutors said.

Authorities haven’t alleged a motive, but the complaint cites James’s violent and deranged posted on YouTube and other social media platforms about homeless people on the subway. In one video, per the complaint, he said “I should have gotten a gun, and just started shooting.”

Authorities searched a storage facility James rented, as well as his recent residences, and found “a stockpile of weapons and other dangerous items stored in various locations that he controls,” Winik wrote. “Someone with significant access to weapons, who has proven he is willing to use those weapons, presents a serious and ongoing danger to the community.”