A troubled man who railed against Mayor Eric Adams and made bizarre, threatening rants on YouTube has been identified as a person of interest — and now a suspect — in the savage Brooklyn subway attack that injured at least 23 people Tuesday morning, officials said.
Frank James — who warned last month that he was “entering the danger zone” — rented a U-Haul van tied to the N train attack in Sunset Park and is being sought for questioning, police said at an evening briefing.
“Mr. Mayor, I’m a victim of your mental health program,” James said in one lengthy video.
“I’m 63 now full of hate, full of anger, and full of bitterness.”
He also criticized the mayor for not doing more to combat homelessness.
“Eric Adams, Eric Adams: What are you doing, brother? What’s happening with this homeless situation,” he said while referring to the subway. “Every car I went to was loaded with homeless people. It was so bad, I couldn’t even stand. I had to keep moving from car to car.”
The NYPD said it was increasing security for Adams after police discovered the videos.
James said in the videos that he had a diagnosed mental illness and railed against what he called the “horror show” of the city’s mental health services.
“What’s going on in that place is violence,” he said about a facility where he claimed to have received care. “Not physical violence,” he explained, “but the kind of violence a child experiences in grade school … that would make him go get a gun and shooting motherf—ers.”
The person of interest ranted about race issues and claimed that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was proof that black people were treated with disdain in society.
“These white motherf—ers, this is what they do,” he said. “Ultimately at the end of the day, they kill and commit genocide against each other. What do you think they gonna do to your black ass?”
In his rambling conspiracy theory, James claimed that a race war would follow the ongoing conflict in Europe.
“It’s just a matter of time before these white motherf—ers decide, ‘Hey listen. Enough is enough. These n—ers got to go,'” he said.
“And what’re you going to do? You gonna fight. And guess what? You gonna die. ‘Cause unlike President [Volodymyr Zelensky] over in Ukraine, nobody has your back. The whole world is against you. And you’re against your f—ing self. So why should you be alive again is the f—ing question. Why should a n—er be alive on this planet? Besides to pick cotton or chop sugar cane or tobacco.”
The only options James could find, he claimed, was to commit more violence or become a criminal.
“And so the message to me is: I should have gotten a gun, and just started shooting motherf—ers,” he said.
“Or I should have gotten some dope and started shooting or starting hitting bi—es in the head, robbing old ladies, you know what the f— it is.”
The key to James’ van was found at the scene of the crime, as was as a credit card that rented the vehicle out of Philadelphia, cops and law enforcement sources said.
Cops believe that James was living out of the U-Haul van because his clothing and personal care products were inside.
It is unclear if James is the suspected gunman, the department said.
Authorities said 10 of the injured commuters had been wounded by gunfire.
The gunman had been on the run for hours before police uncovered a crucial clue: the van, which had Arizona plates and was located on West Third Street near Kings Highway late Tuesday afternoon, sources said.
Police have launched a massive manhunt for the shooter and revealed that surveillance cameras at the Sunset Park subway station were not working at the time of the assault. Law enforcement sources told The Post that the cameras tend to go out “from time to time.”
NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell said at an earlier press conference that the suspect is a roughly 5-foot-5 black man with a heavy build at around 170 pounds. He was wearing a gas mask, an orange and green construction-type vest, neon-green work helmet and a hooded gray sweatshirt at the time.
During an evening press briefing, Sewell said that among the items recovered by cops at the scene were a 9mm handgun, a hatchet, gasoline and “consumer-grade fireworks.”
At least one witness said she mistook the attacker for an MTA worker.
In an email earlier in the day to the entire police patrol force, cops had been ordered to keep their eyes peeled for the U-Haul and mark down its location and license plates.
Anyone with information on the shooting should call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS or log onto the CrimeStoppers website.
