34 2GM Wednesday April 13 2022 | the times
Wo r l d
A gunman in a gas mask detonated a
smoke canister in a rush-hour subway
train and opened fire as it pulled into a
Brooklyn station, shooting ten people
and leaving five of them in a critical
condition.
Commuters ran from the train as it
came to a stop. Some collapsed, bleed-
ing profusely on the platform as smoke
billowed through the doors. Sixteen
were injured in the incident, according
to the New York fire service. Some
made it onto a train across the platform
whose driver pulled away, helping them
to escape, officials said.
In their midst the gunman, dressed in
an orange high-vis vest like a subway
worker, slipped away. Keechant Sewell,
commissioner of New York police, said
the attack was not being treated as an
act of terrorism but the gunman’s mo-
tives were unclear. She said he was
black and 5ft 5in tall.
“This individual is still on the loose,”
Kathy Hochul, New York’s governor,
said last night as she visited the subway
station. “This person is dangerous. This
is an active shooter incident right now
in the city of New York.”
She said it was the latest shooting in
a city struggling with a crime wave that
evokes the late 1980s. “We are sick and
tired of reading headlines of mass
shootings,” she said, adding that the
state would deploy all its resources “to
fight this insanity that’s seizing our
cities”.
The incident began on a rainy morn-
ing, as New Yorkers dropped their
children off at school and went about
their normal days, the governor said.
That normality had been shattered “by
a cold-hearted and depraved” gunman,
she added.
Sewell said the attacker boarded a
train heading north from South Brook-
lyn towards Manhattan. Just before
8.24am, he “donned what appeared to
be a gas mask”, she said. Then, as the
train was pulling into a station, he took
a canister from his bag and set it off.
As the carriage filled with smoke, he
started shooting. A passenger, identi-
fied only as Clare, told the New York
NEW YORKNEW JERSEY
Statue of
LibertyBrooklyn
Sunset ParkTwo milesNew YorkShooting at 36th
Street subway
platformManhattanThe Vox party began its first day in office
yesterday as a junior partner to the con-
servative Popular Party (PP) in Spain’s
largest region, the first time a right-wing
populist has held any power since the
dictatorship of General Franco.
Vox has hailed the power-sharing
agreement as a possible forerunner to a
national coalition government, which
would move the country the furthest
right since democracy was restored
after Franco’s death in 1975.
Santiago Abascal, the leader of Vox,
said the new government in Castile and
Leon “is going to have many enemies”Right-wing populists in office
Spain
David Sharrock Madridbecause it is “a possible alternative for
all of Spain”.
However, the investiture ceremony
drew comparisons to a shotgun wed-
ding from some commentators. The
PP’s new leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo
did not attend the event and senior
figures dismissed suggestions of a
future national pact as “premature”.
The PP has been in power in Castile
and Leon for 35 years, but has swapped
coalition partners from the centrist
Citizens party to Vox.
Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, the re-
gional leader, argued that the outcome
was “the only viable alternative to avoid
a repeat election that nobody wanted”
and “guarantees four years of stability”.T
hree people died in a cable
car crash in India, two of
them falling to their death
during a rescue operation
(Amrit Dhillon writes).
Dozens of pilgrims were trapped
in carriages hundreds of feet in the
air after two cable cars collided ona mountain. Helicopters rescued 46
people in a two-day operation after
the accident on the route to a
Hindu temple in the state of
Jharkhand.
At least a dozen were in hospital
with serious injuries. Some spent
two days suspended above the
densely forested hill as rescuers
were able to work in daylight only.
Drones were flown to the cars to
deliver food, water and medical
supplies.
One of those trapped, Sandip,
struggled to describe the harrowingPilgrims trapped
after mid-air
cable car crash
Masked gunman
shoots ten on
busy subway train
Post that he had dropped “some kind of
cylinder that sparked at the top”. Then
there were gunshots: “I don’t know how
many,” she said.
Juliana Fonda, a broadcast engineer,
told the Gothamist news site that she
was on the train when passengers from
the carriage behind hers started bang-
ing on the door between them. “There
was a lot of loud pops, and there was
smoke in the other car,” she said. “And
people were trying to get in and they
couldn’t; they were pounding on the
door to get into our car.”
Mobile phone pictures showed pas-
sengers scrambling from the train as
the doors opened, with others crouch-
ing beside the injured, trying to stanch
their bleeding. One appeared to
attempt CPR on one of the wounded.
Janno Lieber, head of the local trans-
port authority, said workers used a train
on the next platform to carry people to
safety. “That was smart thinking,” he
remarked. He said the public response
reminded him of the reaction on 9/11.
“I stood on Fourth Avenue and
watched New York come back from
that tragedy,” he said. “I watched New
Yorkers help each other.
“That’s what we saw on the platform
today. We saw New Yorkers in a difficult
situation helping each other.”
Laura Kavanagh, acting commis-
sioner of the fire service, said last night
that ten of the 16 injured had gunshot
wounds and five of them were in a criti-
cal but stable condition. The others had
suffered from smoke inhalation, been
hit by “shrapnel” or been injured in the
panic.
Police issued a renewed appeal for
witnesses later in the afternoon, as it
emerged that CCTV cameras around
the station had malfunctioned and
might not have captured the suspect.
Officers were seen fanning out
around the station, asking local busi-
nesses about their security cameras.
“Detectives are in my apartment build-
ing, knocking on doors for exterior
camera footage looking for the alleged
shooter,” Kristen Brown, a reporter for
Bloomberg, said on Twitter.
As the manhunt broadened, there
were reports that the suspect might be
driving a van with Arizona number
plates.
Officers received an alert with the
vehicle’s plates and a warning to ap-
proach it with caution, according to the
New York Post. It said police had discov-
ered a credit card at the scene that ap-
peared to belong to the suspect, which
had been used recently to rent the
vehicle in Philadelphia. It said officers
had also recovered a jammed Glock
pistol with two extended-ammunition
magazines and a bag full of firecrackers.
The van, rented from U-Haul, was
later found in Gravesend, a district
about five miles south of the station
where the shooting took place, accord-
ing to the Post.United States
Will Pavia New York
Behind the story
T
he former police officer
who is now mayor of
New York City pledged
in his campaign to focus
on public safety and
tackle rises in crime that were
sparking fears of a slide back to
the chaos and disorder of the late
1980s (Will Pavia writes).
But in his first 100 days in
office, Eric Adams has found
himself at the scene of a series of
violent crimes: a woman pushed
on to the subway tracks in Times
Square, a worker killed behind
the counter of a fast-food
restaurant, and recently, the
shooting of a teenage girl who
was walking home from school.
Yesterday Adams had to watch
from afar, while self-isolating.
It was left to Kathy Hochul, the
governor of New York, to set the
shooting in the context of a surge
in crime that began as the city
emerged from the pandemic.
“We are sick and tired of reading
headlines about crime,” she said.
Bill Bratton, who served as
police commissioner in New
York in the 1990s and is credited
with laying the foundations for a
long golden age of public safety
in the city, said recently that he
was stunned to see overall crime
rates up by 44 per cent this year.
Bratton blamed more liberal
prosecutors who “refuse to do
anything about quality of life
crime, the thing that people see
every day that makes them
fearful: drug-selling on the
corners, aggressive begging,
homelessness out of control”.
Richard Aborn, president of the
Citizens Crime Commission, said
there was some basis for Bratton’s
claim. He said that from around
2018, “the city started pulling
back on quality of life
enforcement”. Though the overall
crime numbers are a fraction of
what they were in 1990, the trends
are bad, he said. “It could be an
incredibly violent summer.”Murders in New York
2,0001,5001,0005000
1960 80 2000 20
Data shows murders and non-negligent
manslaughter. Source: Historical Comfinal Data,
Shooting & Homicide Database