"This nation was born in violence, it’s kept alive by violence or the threat thereof, and it’s going to die a violent death," says James in a video where he takes on the moniker"Prophet of Doom."thought by police to be James himself
A prime trove of evidence, they said, is his YouTube videos. He seems to have opinions about nearly everything — racism in America, New York City’s new mayor, the state of mental health services, 9/11, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Black women.one in which James ranted about too many homeless people on the subway and put the blame on New York City’s mayor.
In a video posted a day before the attack, James criticizes crime against Black people and says things would only change if certain people were"stomped, kicked and tortured" out of their"comfort zone.", dressed as a maintenance or construction worker in a yellow hard hat and orange working jacket with reflective tape.
Left behind at the scene was the gun, extended magazines, a hatchet, detonated and undetonated smoke grenades, a black garbage can, a rolling cart, gasoline and the key to a U-Haul van, police said. In New Jersey, James has three other arrests in 1991, 1992, and 2007, including for trespass, larceny, and disorderly conduct, police said during Wednesday's press conference.
Police said James was born and raised in New York City. In his videos, he said he finished a machine shop course in 1983 then worked as a gear machinist at Curtiss-Wright, an aerospace manufacturer in New Jersey, until 1991 when he was he was hit by a one-two punch of bad news: He was fired from his job and, soon after, his father whom he had lived with in New Jersey died.
If accurate, this guy snapped after living a hard life. Doesn’t excuse what chaos he sowed and now will be forever stuck in a system he hated.