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A US federal judge on Thursday ordered the man charged with this week’s mass shooting in a New York City subway to remain in custody and undergo a psychiatric exam after prosecutors called the assault the worst disruption to the city’s transportation since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Frank James, 62, making his initial court appearance a day after his arrest in lower Manhattan, is accused of injuring 23 people by setting off smoke bombs and spraying the inside of a subway car with gunfire during Tuesday morning’s rush-hour commute in Brooklyn.
James was represented by two public defenders as he was formally presented with a criminal complaint charging him with a single count of committing a terrorist or other violent attack against a mass transportation system – a felony carrying a maximum sentence of life in prison.
“The defendant terrifyingly opened fire on passengers in a crowded subway train, interrupting their morning commute in a way this city hasn’t seen in more than 20 years,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Sara Winik told the federal court in Brooklyn.
She was evidently referring to the chaos wreaked on the city when two jetliners seized by suicide hijackers were flown into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center on a Tuesday morning in September more than two decades ago.
The mass shooting also followed a string of violent crimes that had already unnerved riders of one of the largest subway systems in the world, including instances of commuters being pushed onto subway tracks from station platforms.
James, dressed in beige jail clothes and wearing a blue surgical mask, spoke only briefly to say he understood the charges.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Roanne Mann ordered James to be held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, the main jail for defendants awaiting federal trial in New York City, and…
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Source : france24
