a few miles from here from a different subway stop and subway station. that van rented in philadelphia. not only does james have an address in philadelphia, he also has an address in wisconsin as well. investigators following up on those locations. police say that when james boarded the train, he boarded the second subway train, sat somewhere in the rear of the train, and with him was someone by the name of claire tunkle. she was there on the train yesterday morning and actually interacted with him. my motive, getting on that train, i look people in the eye. i assess, are they okay, should i get close to them, are they crazy. honestly when i locked eyes with this individual and did not get a sense that there was anything wrong with him, you know, he
full of smoke, fires 33 times. when the subway comes to a stop, the train stops, the doors open and he walks across the platform along with many of the other passengers trying to get away from the gunman. he joins them, goes into the subway train and goes one stop north up to 25th street and then takes the stairs and walks out. as to what happens now, he s been arrested. he s in state custody. he ll be transferred to federal custody. he ll appear before a federal magistrate judge for an initial appearance on this single count of violating a federal statute that makes it a crime to attempt to harm people or harm facilities belonging to a train system. so it s not, strictly speaking, a terrorism charge. that s in the title of the statute but not in the terrorism section of the u.s. code. there are a couple of statutes they could have looked at,
there are still two schools here. one over there, one behind me in the other direction, that are still on lockdown. there was some concern about students arriving later than 8:30 or so in the morning, and what their status would be. but all of that seems to be everything here now seems to be calm, on hold, as they look for answers. and yes, this is a very working class, hard-working neighborhood. there are a lot of people here who are standing around, who would have taken the subway to get to where they are, to work. it s a residential neighborhood. it s also very commercial and also somewhat industrial. there s nothing about it that s striking about it as to why there would be a target. there have been other bomb attacks that happened around the city and other high-profile places, if you will, that have been targeted. this feels like a very typical residential neighborhood in brooklyn, tough the beaten path. but the subway stop where it happened was something of a hub.
less than 24 hours after joe biden announced a new measure to reduce gun violence in america. advocates say that yesterday s moves were a big and important step. the violence that we saw just today shows us how urgent gun reform is in this country. how overdue it is. joining our conversation, matt dowd, political strategist, founder of country over party. also msnbc political analyst. it s a conversation we ve had so many times. what are your thoughts? thanks, nicolle. i mean, another terrible day. we seem to have these every other day. in the course of this, i was thinking that subway stop in that area up until the year ago was the subways that my oldest son and his wife, my daughter-in-law, used every day. that same subway stop up until about a year ago. you know, the last data we have
was. it s a preliminary investigation. this is terror of someone attempting to terrorize our system. they brought in what appears to be some form of smoke device. they discharged a weapon. and so i don t want to be premature in identifying that this was or was not. jesse: okay, so it s terror but it s too premature to say what it was. so enlightening. we do know the neighborhood where the subway stop is a heavily asian neighborhood as you can see from the video many of the people on the subway were asian and we don t know whether they were targeted because they were asian. if this was a hate crime situation. but we ll report what the facts are so the country can stay safe. a retired first grade nypd