Gunman at large after NYC attack
10 shot, six more hurt in subway rampage
At least 16 people were injured, 10 of them from gunshot wounds and five of those listed as in critical condition, in a shooting attack in a New York City subway attack Tuesday morning.
The suspect in the attack had not been caught as of presstime.
“This morning, ordinary New Yorkers woke up in anticipation of a relatively normal day. … That sense of tranquility and normalness was disrupted — brutally disrupted — by an individual so cold-hearted and depraved of heart that they had no care about the individuals that they assaulted as they simply went about their daily lives,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said in an early-afternoon press conference.
“The people of the entire state of New York stand with the people of this city, this community and we say no more,” she added. “No more mass shootings, no more disrupting lives.”
The N train — on an express route between Coney Island in Brooklyn in the south through Manhattan to Ditmars Boulevard in Astoria, Queens, in the north, according to transit maps — was carrying morning commuters toward Manhattan when it approached the 36th Street Station in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood at around 8:24 a.m. Tuesday.
At that time, a man in one of its cars allegedly donned a gas mask and opened a smoke canister from his bag, according to the narrative laid out by NYC Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell Tuesday afternoon.
A video shot through a closed door between subway cars shows someone who may be the suspect raising an arm and pointing at something, possibly the door to the conductor’s booth, as the train began to fill with smoke and the shooting started.
“My subway door opened into calamity. It was smoke and blood and people screaming,” eyewitness Sam Carcamo told radio station 1010 WINS.
Photographs from the scene’s aftermath show people lying on the station platform amid visible blood spatter.
Sewell said the suspect is a black man of about 5-foot-5 and of “heavy build.” He was wearing a green construction vest and a gray hooded sweatshirt. Hochul described him as “on the loose” and “dangerous.”
Sewell said that the attack was not being investigated as terrorism, but that authorities are not ruling any possible motive out at this point.
North on Interstate 90, authorities in Boston collaborated with the NYPD and federal partners to determine risk. The MBTA transit police said in a statement about two hours after the shooting that “there is no evidence, credible or otherwise, to suggest the MBTA system is a potential target.” They added that they were increasing the number of uniformed officers and K9 units on patrol.
That sentiment was echoed by Boston Police Department spokesman Sgt. Det. John Boyle when he spoke with the Herald, adding that his department was working with local, state and federal partners and the NYPD to monitor further developments. The State Police issued a statement saying roughly the same thing.
Of the 16 people injured in the Brooklyn attack, 10 were shot and five are listed in critical but stable conditions in city hospitals, according to Laura Kavanagh, the first deputy commissioner of the NYC Fire Department. She said the other injuries were from smoke inhalation, and injuries sustained in the panic following the shooting or from shrapnel.
New York City saw 16.2% more shootings last month than in March the previous year, according to NYPD statistics. Overall crime in the city has seen a yearover-year increase of 36.5%, driven by major increases in theft-related crimes.
The R train was in the station at the same time and transit staff through their “smart thinking” drove the train out of the station as the violence erupted, said Janno Lieber, the chief executive officer of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the agency that run’s the city’s subways and other public transportation.
“I watched New Yorkers help each other and storekeepers walk out and give people water,” Lieber added in a personal note of his experience during 9/11. “That was the same thing we saw on the platform today; we saw New Yorkers in a difficult situation, in an emergency, helping each other.”