WHATS NEXT? Will Authorities Find Admissions in the killer’s “Manifesto,” “Rap Book” or a “Social Media Posts?” According to liars at the NYT, Five miles away from where a man opened fire in a subway train in Brooklyn and shot 10 people during the morning rush, the police recovered a rented U-Haul van late Tuesday afternoon that they believed had been driven by the gunman, a senior law enforcement official said.

But the van was empty, the official said, and the shooter remained at large, as agents from dozens of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies searched for him, more than eight hours after he donned a gas mask on a crowded N train, released a canister of smoke and began shooting.

At least 23 people were injured, 10 of them by gunfire, on the train and on the platform at the busy 36th Street station in the Sunset Park neighborhood, where three subway lines meet. The Fire Department said that five victims were in critical condition, but none were believed to have suffered life-threatening injuries.

The shooting, shortly before 8:30 a.m., set off panic and chaos aboard the train, in the station and the surrounding streets and sent schools in the vicinity into lockdowns that lasted much of the day. It came as the city was already struggling to cope with both a rise in shootings citywide and an increase in crime and disorder in the subway that has scared commuters from returning to a transit system that saw ridership plummet during the pandemic.

Mayor Eric Adams said that the search for the gunman was hampered by the fact that at least one security camera at the 36th Street subway station that might have captured the scene was not operating. There was a “malfunction with the camera system at that particular station,” Mr. Adams told WCBS 880 radio.

Witnesses to the shooting described the gunman as a short, dark-skinned man with a heavy build wearing a green construction vest and gray sweatshirt.

The van was spotted in front of an apartment building on West 3rd Street just off the Kings Highway shopping strip in the Gravesend neighborhood, the senior law enforcement official said.

The U-Haul was found after a man who lives in the Highlawn, an apartment building on the street, called the police to report it. In an interview, the man said his superintendent had complained to him that morning about a van with Arizona plates blocking the driveway, preventing him from moving his car. The tenant said he later heard about the hunt for the van on Rudy Giuliani’s radio show.

The senior law enforcement official also said that a gun had been found inside the subway station. The authorities have not released a suspect’s name, nor a motive for the attack. But another high-ranking police official said that the attack appeared to have been planned and showed no signs of having stemmed from something spontaneous like a dispute on the train.

As the shooting unfolded and the doors of the N train opened, sending smoke billowing through the station, fearful riders fled, many of them hurrying onto an R train sitting across the platform. Subway seats and cars were streaked with blood as people called for help.

Fifteen people were treated at hospitals for injuries including gunshot wounds and smoke inhalation: eight at NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn, five at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, and three at NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, the hospitals said.

As officers scoured a Brooklyn neighborhood for a man who opened fire in a subway car, at least one security camera at a nearby station recorded nothing, thanks to “a malfunction,” Mayor Eric Adams said.

The issue was under investigation, Mr. Adams said, and officials were working to determine whether a single camera — or all of them — failed. One senior law enforcement official briefed on the investigation said on Tuesday afternoon that it appeared none were in full operation at the time of the shooting that morning.

The malfunction appeared to be a significant obstacle in the investigation, which by late Tuesday afternoon involved an expansive search for information throughout streets in Sunset Park and other parts of the city.

The description of the suspect was vague — heavy build, green construction vest and gray sweatshirt — and bystander videos of the smoke-filled scene underground revealed no obvious assailant. Police said he is a roughly 5-foot-5 black man with a heavy build at around 170 pounds. A second senior law enforcement official said the police believed the gunman was driving a U-Haul with Arizona license plates. A vehicle matching the description was found late Tuesday afternoon near Kings Highway in the borough, police said. Investigators also found a gun at the shooting scene. [MORE]

Mr. Adams, who was overseeing the response from Gracie Mansion after testing positive for the coronavirus this week, said in a television interview around 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday that officials had not determined the gunman’s motive or whether he was from New York. He said earlier in the afternoon that the number of transit officers who regularly patrol the system would double and that officers who work day shifts would continue onto the evening.

Janno Lieber, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said in separate interview that he was not aware of any specific problems with the security cameras at the Sunset Park station. But he added that a broader review would be completed.

“We have almost 10,000 cameras in our system, including almost 600 just on the Brooklyn section of this one line where the attack took place,” Mr. Lieber said. “So we’re going to work with the NYPD to capture all that video to find out where this criminal may have come in or out of the system.”