NEW YORK: A Syrian refugee has become an unlikely hero after he helped police to track down Frank James, the suspect in the Brooklyn subway mass shooting.
Zack Tahhan, a 21-year-old from Aleppo in Syria was trending on social media for tipping-off police that led to the arrest of Frank James.
Twenty-nine people were wounded in the attack. Tahhan works as a security camera technician. On Wednesday, he was updating a closed-circuit TV system at a hardware store at the corner of First Avenue and Saint Marks Place in Manhattan’s East Village when he spotted James. He immediately recognized him as the suspect in the Brooklyn shooting, whose photograph had been widely shared in news reports and online after it was released by the New York Police Department.
Tahhan told Arab News that his first instinct was to warn passers-by and so he yelled to them to “Please stay away” because he feared there might be another shooting.
He then ran to the manager of the store where he was working and asked him to call the police but the man hesitated.
“It is not easy to catch someone like James because even if people spot him, they are afraid to get involved in any way,” Tahhan said.
“The manager told me he didn’t want to get in trouble. He wanted nothing to do with it. But why? If you see something with your own eyes, you need to say something. Why are you scared? Of whom?”
Unable to persuade the manager to act swiftly, Tahhan instead ran up the street to the first police car he saw and told the officers that James was nearby.
“I am so happy we caught him,” he said. “Imagine if he was on his way to Times Square, where massive crowds fill the streets; he could have hurt thousands of people.”
To those who have hailed him as a hero, including some who dubbed him the “King of New York,” he said: “Thank you. People are nice here. I want to tell them, guys, just be safe. Make sure your family is safe.”
He revealed that he is not much of a fan of social media. He opened an Instagram account years ago but has only posted one photo, and his Facebook and Twitter accounts are also inactive.
Born in Brooklyn, his Syrian father took the family back to Aleppo when Tahhan was one-year-old. At first, they lived a peaceful life in the Sabil neighborhood, an upscale, predominantly Sunni area.
He said he was 13 when the Battle of Aleppo began in the early days of the Syrian civil war. Although still so young himself, he volunteered to help rescue civilians injured in attacks and said he retrieved many body parts of children from under the rubble.
The Battle of Aleppo began on July 19, 2012. A UNESCO World Heritage Site and home to centuries-old landmarks, Aleppo was the city worst-affected by the war. It was almost completely destroyed and residents fled in a mass exodus. The battle continued for more than four years before Syrian regime troops destroyed the last-remaining rebel supply line, with the help of Russian airstrikes, and recaptured the city in December 2016.
It was one of the longest sieges in the history of modern warfare. It left about 31,000 people dead and damaged or destroyed more than 34,000 buildings, including in the Old City.
Tahhan’s older brother, who at the start of the war was a soldier in the Syrian army, foresaw the brutality and devastation that was fast approaching. He refused to turn his gun on his own people and so the two brothers fled to Turkey.
Tahhan remained there for three years before renewing his US passport, which had expired years earlier. It was something he thought he would never have to do. He eventually reached the US and ended up in New Jersey in 2018.
He laments the fact that he is unable to return to Syria, where his extended family still lives because he and his brother are wanted by the regime.
“My whole childhood was a pure tragedy,” he said. “We live under a criminal, killer regime. What can you say about a president who kills his own people, who kill children?
“What would he do if someone killed his children before his eyes? What would he feel then? If someone hit him, wouldn’t he feel pain? Doesn’t he know that others feel pain too when they are subjected to violence?” (Arab News)
