YouTube account linked to NYC subway shooting suspect includes video relating to mass shooter in Molson Coors rampage

A YouTube channel that features videos appearing to be from a suspect in the New York City subway shooting includes a video about the Molson Coors mass shooting in Milwaukee.

Frank R. James, 62, who is linked to an address in Milwaukee, was arrested Wednesday, ending a more than 24-hour hunt after the attack that injured more than two dozen people.

Authorities are reviewing several social media pages including a now-removed YouTube account with videos appearing to feature James, USA TODAY reported. The videos include bigoted ramblings, rants and some threats of violence.

In a video uploaded Feb. 27, 2020 from that YouTube account, a male narrator discusses the Molson Coors shooting which had occurred one day earlier. Anthony Ferrill, a Molson Coors electrician, fatally shot five co-workers and killed himself in one of Wisconsin’s worst mass shootings.

The man speaking in the video said the shooting happened “in my town” at the brewery plant and talked over images of Ferrill and the plant. He also paused to play news coverage of the shooting and later said he related to some of Ferrill's workplace experiences.

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"What the news report did not say and what for some reason they're very reluctant to say and the police chief did not mention it …they did not mention this very important factoid and that is that Anthony Ferrill is Black,” the man said.

In the days after the shooting, former brewery workers came forward to describe a hostile, racist environment at the plant, leading to speculation that was the shooter’s motive. The man in the YouTube video showed those former employees’ accounts.

"There you have it. There it is. I alluded to that and I had a feeling but I didn’t want to say it,” the man said.

Ferrill had experienced racism on the job. A noose was put on or in his locker years earlier, prompting a company investigation, and coworkers said he had been called racial slurs by other employees.

But some of the information circulating after the shooting and repeated by the YouTuber — that Ferrill had filed a discrimination lawsuit or had been fired the day of the shooting — was false.

Hundreds of pages of police records released months after the shooting made it clear that Ferrill’s co-workers, even one who also reported racist acts to the company, did not think racism and discrimination prompted the shooting. Those interviewed, including family members, described Ferrill as someone who had grown increasingly paranoid over the past two years, the reports showed.

The man in the YouTube video said he related to Ferrill’s experience, saying he used to wake up at 2 a.m. to ride more than three hours to get to his job. His white coworkers, he said, “had no regard for that whatsoever” and saw him as an “(n-word) they wanted to (expletive) attack.”

The man said he had worked as a machinist at the time, though it is unclear where.

"You see the situation I've been talking about again, for how many (expletive) years I've been talking about this situation with work and what I went through on my jobs, and now we have a Black dude that did the, you know, ultimate whatever, you know, and you're going to see more of it, not less,” he said.

“You're going to see more,” he added. “It's not going to get better, it's going to get worse, as well it should."

Other videos in the YouTube channel appeared to show the man as he drove away from Wisconsin. In a video dated March 20, 2022, a man who appeared to be James said he was on his way to Philadelphia.

"As I leave the state of Wisconsin, about to be back in the state of Illinois, all I can say is good riddance and I will never be back again alive ..." the man said in the video.

In another video uploaded three days later, the man said he was recording in Harrisburg, Penn. The man ranted about people upset to see Black people in positions of power and spoke of a coming World War, citing Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"We're living in some very dangerous times. Some very uncertain times," the man said. "I know that will be best — if nuclear devices were dropped and all of mankind was wiped out."

New York police say James rented a U-Haul van in Philadelphia. Keys to that van were found inside the subway train where the shooting took place.

Inside the subway car, investigators also found a Glock 17 9mm semi-handgun, two non-detonated smoke grenades, a hatchet, gasoline and fireworks.

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Mary Spicuzza of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.

Contact Ashley Luthern at ashley.luthern@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @aluthern.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Video linked to subway shooting suspect mentions Molson Coors killings