'KILLER' TRIED TO RECRUIT RACIST POSSE
Targeted Times Sq. before slay: cops
The sword-wielding white supremacist accused of killing a black man in Hell’s Kitchen after taking the bus from Baltimore on a twisted mission tried to recruit racists for a slaughter in Times Square, police sources said Thursday.
After arriving on Friday, James Harris Jackson, 28, spent three days wandering Manhattan trying to gather fellow bigots to kill black men in the Crossroads of the World, but he had little luck, the sources said.
So instead, on Monday, he used 66-year-old Timothy Caughman, who is black, as a sick form of “practice,” officials said.
“Mr. Jackson targeted the man on Ninth Avenue because the man was black and Mr. Jackson regarded the killing as practice prior to going to Times Square to kill additional black men,” a criminal complaint states.
Prosecutors said the slaying was “an act mostly likely of terrorism,” because Jackson was allegedly intent on mass murder.
“His intent was to kill as many black men here in New York as he could,” Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi told Judge Herb Moses during Jackson’s arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court on Thursday.
Jackson is charged with murder in the second degree as a hate crime and weapons possession.
His express intent was to “target male blacks,” Chief of Manhattan South Detectives William Aubry said.
Jackson allegedly attacked Caughman near Ninth Avenue and West 36th Street at about 11:15 p.m. Monday, stabbing him repeatedly before fleeing.
Caughman stumbled nine blocks to the Midtown South station house at 11:24 p.m. and was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he died of internal injuries, officials said. Jackson turned himself in about a day later after seeing security-camera images of himself on the news.
He told cops he gave himself up to prevent further bloodshed after seeing a mixed-race couple, police sources said. But he appeared unrepentant in court on Thursday, wearing a white Tyvek jumpsuit and a sneer on his face.
Jackson’s attorney told the court his client has “obvious psychological issues.” Moses ordered Jackson held without bail.