Subway shooter Frank James — who opened fire on a packed Brooklyn subway train, shooting 10 people and igniting terror underground in April 2022 — will spend the rest of his days behind bars, a federal judge ruled Thursday.
James, 64, was sentenced to life in prison by Brooklyn federal court Judge William F. Kuntz for the bloody April 12, 2022 attack that seriously injured subway commuters and petrified the city.
Prosecutors had asked for James to spend 10 concurrent sentences of life imprisonment for the “careful and prolonged planning” that went into the attack, according to court papers.
James pleaded guilty to 10 counts of committing a terrorist attack or other violence against a mass transportation system – one for each gunshot victim – in January earlier this year.
“My intention was to cause serious bodily injury to the people on the train,” James admitted at the time of the hearing.
Federal prosecutors said James set off smoke bombs on a crowded Manhattan-bound N train in Sunset Park before he squeezed off 32 shots.
James had traveled to Brooklyn from an Airbnb in Philadelphia and boarded the subway car with a smoke bomb, a gas mask and a Glock 17 handgun which he legally purchased in Ohio, prosecutors have said.
When the train moved between the 59th Street and 36th Street stations, James’ smoke bomb went off, cops said.
James disguised himself to look like an MTA worker – wearing a yellow hard hat and orange reflective vest – while hiding behind a mask when he started opening fire, strategically positioning victims at the opposite end of the train car to create a “kill funnel” so no one could stop him, according to prosecutors.
No one was killed in the attack – but 10 people were shot, including several others who suffered injuries from smoke inhalation or other injuries that occurred on the 36th Street station platform.
Images from the attack showed a platform covered in bodies and blood.
The cold-blooded creep denied that he had intended to kill people, who had begun planning the attack as early as 2017 when he started collecting weapons, prosecutors have said.
James, who has a history of spewing racist hate, had led a digital paper trail detailing his plans for the attack. His online searches included “MTA,” “New York,” “transit” and “stops on the N train” – and foreshadowed the eventual chaos in videos posted to social media, according to the feds.
The madman bizarrely called Crime Stoppers on himself after a day-long manhunt following the shooting.
James’ defense attorneys argued that he should be sentenced to 18 years in prison because he’s been “tormented by lifelong paranoid schizophrenia” leading up to the April 2022 attack.
“But Mr. James is not evil. He is very, very ill. A just sentence in this case tempers the natural urge for retribution with mercy,” his lawyers said, according to court documents.