Long Island Rail Road shooting
On December 7, 1993, a mass shooting occurred aboard a Long Island Rail Road train in Garden City Park, New York, United States. As the train arrived at the Merillon Avenue station, passenger Colin Ferguson began firing at other passengers with a semi-automatic pistol. Six of the victims were killed and 19 others were wounded before Ferguson was tackled and held down by other passengers on the train.
Ferguson's trial was noted for some unusual developments, including him dismissing his defense counsel, insisting on representing himself and questioning his victims on the stand. He was convicted in February 1995 on six counts of murder and 19 counts of attempted murder, and sentenced to life imprisonment. He is currently incarcerated at Mid-State Correctional Facility, with an earliest possible release date of August 6, 2309.
Shooting
On December 7, 1993, Colin Ferguson boarded the 5:33 p.m. eastbound train at Penn Station in Manhattan, New York, which stopped at the Jamaica station in Queens. He boarded the third car of the eastbound Long Island Rail Road commuter train from Penn Station to Hicksville, along with more than 80 other passengers. He sat in the southwestern end of the car, carrying a Ruger P89 semi-automatic pistol and a canvas bag filled with 160 rounds of 9 millimeter ammunition.As the train approached the Merillon Avenue station in Garden City Park, Long Island, Ferguson drew his gun, dropped several cartridges on the floor, stood up, and opened fire at random. During the next three minutes, he killed six people and injured another 19. Some passengers mistook the gunshots for caps or fireworks until a woman shouted, "He's got a gun! He's shooting people!" Ferguson walked east on the train, pulling the trigger steadily about every half second. Several passengers tried to hide beneath their seats, while others fled to the eastern end of the train and tried to enter the next car. Ferguson walked down the aisle of the train and shot people to his right and left as he passed each seat, briefly facing each victim before firing. An article in The New York Times called Ferguson's actions "as methodical as if he were taking tickets." Ferguson said, "I'm going to get you," over and over as he walked down the aisle.
Other passengers farther away in the train did not realize that a shooting had occurred until after the train stopped, as a crowd of panicked passengers fled from the third car into neighboring cars. One man appeared annoyed by their unruliness and said, "Be calm," before they forced a train door open and fled into the station. Two people were injured in the stampede of passengers. The train's conductor was informed of the shooting, but he decided against opening the train doors right away because two of the cars were not yet at the platform. An announcement was made ordering conductors not to open the doors, but engineer Thomas Silhan climbed out the window of his cab and opened each door from the outside so that panicked passengers could escape.
Ferguson had emptied two 15-round magazines during the shooting. While he was reloading his third magazine, somebody yelled, "Grab him!" Passengers Michael O'Connor, Kevin Blum, and Mark McEntee tackled him and pinned him to one of the train's seats. Several other passengers ran forward to grab his arms and legs and helped to pin him across a three-seat row with his head towards the window and legs towards the aisle. While he was pinned, Ferguson said, "Oh God, what did I do? What did I do? I deserve whatever I get." He also repeatedly pleaded with those holding him, "Don't shoot me. I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Five to six people continued to hold him pinned for several minutes while they awaited relief. Andrew Roderick, an off-duty LIRR police officer who was picking up his wife from the train, then boarded the train and handcuffed him. Of the people who were killed, five died on the day of the shooting while the sixth died five days later. The dead ranged in ages from 24 to 52.
Investigation
Police detectives later said it appeared Ferguson had been planning the shooting for more than a week. LIRR police chief Joseph Flynn said, "This was the work of a deranged, maniacal person who for a variety of reasons decided to explode." Ferguson had expressed racist opinions, specifically against White and Asian people. None of Ferguson's victims were Black, although it was unclear whether any other Black passengers were aboard the train. Ferguson showed no emotion as he sat in the back of a police car, which some passengers said was as shocking and disturbing as the violence of the shooting itself. Upon seeing Ferguson, one of the victims became hysterical and shouted, "How can he be sitting there so calm after everything he did?"Police found pieces of notebook paper in Ferguson's pockets with scribbled notes with the heading "reasons for this". One of the notes referred to "racism by Caucasians and Uncle Tom Negroes". They included a reference to "the false allegations against me by the filthy Caucasian racist female on the #1 line", a reference to his February 1992 arrest. Ferguson's notes expressed anger towards the New York State Workers' Compensation Board, Asians, Governor Mario Cuomo, and "so-called civil right leaders such as the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, C. Vernon Mason, and Calvin Butts." They also included the names and telephone numbers of the Lt. Governor, the Attorney General, and the Manhattan law firm that Ferguson had previously threatened, whom he referred to as "those corrupt 'black' attorneys who not only refuse to help me but tried to steal my car". The notes indicated Ferguson planned to wait to start the killings until he was beyond the New York City limit out of respect for outgoing Mayor David Dinkins and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.
Ferguson showed no remorse during hours of questioning from the Nassau County District Attorney's Office. Officials there said, "He was lucid and clear and aware of what was going on." Ferguson was arraigned on December 8, 1993. He never spoke during the arraignment and did not enter a plea. He was ordered held without bail. As Ferguson was escorted from the courthouse, a reporter asked him if he hated Whites, to which Ferguson replied, "It's a lie".
Perpetrator
Colin Ferguson was born in Kingston, Jamaica, on January 14, 1958 to Von Herman and May Ferguson. Von Herman was a wealthy pharmacist and the managing director of the large pharmaceutical company Hercules Agencies, and was described by Time magazine as "one of the most prominent businessmen in Jamaica". Ferguson attended the Calabar High School in Red Hills Road, Kingston, from 1969 to 1974, where the principal described him as a "well-rounded student" who played cricket and soccer. He graduated in the top third of his class.Von Herman was killed in a car crash in 1978 when Ferguson was aged 20, and his funeral was attended by government and military luminaries. Ferguson's mother died from cancer soon afterwards, and the deaths destroyed the family's fortunes. Family friends said that this deeply disturbed Ferguson. He moved to the United States in 1982 on a visitor's visa. His friends speculated that he had trouble dealing with racism in the U.S. and that he felt frustrated because he could only find menial jobs.
Ferguson married Audrey Warren on May 13, 1986, a native of Southampton County, Virginia, which qualified him for permanent U.S. residence. The couple moved to a house on Long Island where they often fought, sometimes to the point that police intervention was required. On May 18, 1988, she obtained an uncontested divorce from Ferguson, claiming that the marriage ended because they had "differing social views". Acquaintances said that she left Ferguson because he was "too aggressive or antagonistic" for her, and that the divorce was a "crushing blow" to Ferguson.
Ferguson got a job doing clerical work for the Ademco Security Group in Syosset, New York. He slipped and fell on August 18, 1989, while standing on a stool to reach invoices from a filing cabinet, injuring his head, neck, and back, and the injury led to his termination. Ferguson filed a complaint with the state workers' compensation agency, which reviewed the matter over the next several years. He enrolled at Nassau Community College in East Garden City, where he made the dean's list three times. Also that year, he was forced to leave a class after a disciplinary hearing board found that he had acted aggressively towards the teacher.
In late 1990, Ferguson transferred to Adelphi University in Garden City, where he majored in business administration. He spoke out against coexistence with whites, made calls for retributive revolution, and accused others around him of racism. On one occasion, he complained that a white woman in the library shouted racial epithets at him after he asked her about a class assignment, but an investigation concluded that the incident never occurred. Later, he attended a symposium by a faculty member discussing her experiences in South Africa under apartheid. Ferguson interrupted the professor by shouting, "We should be talking about the revolution in South Africa and how to get rid of the white people" and, "Kill everybody white!" Students and teachers tried to quiet him, but he started threatening them, repeatedly saying, "The black revolution will get you." He was suspended from the school in June 1991 as a result of the threats. He was free to reapply after the suspension, but did not.
In 1991, Ferguson rented a room in Flatbush, Brooklyn. He was unemployed and lived around many other West Indian immigrants. Neighbors said that he dressed very neatly but kept to himself and rarely smiled or spoke to anybody, except occasionally to say hello. "He had delusions of grandeur," his landlord Patrick Denis recounted. "He felt like, 'I'm such a great person. There must be only one thing holding me back. It must be white people.'" In 1992, Ferguson's ex-wife filed a complaint with police alleging that he pried open the trunk of her car. Prior to the shooting, she had not seen him since the divorce.
In February 1992, Ferguson was arrested and charged with harassing a woman on a subway. The woman tried to sit in a vacant seat alongside Ferguson and asked him to move over, prompting him to scream at her and press his leg and elbow against her until police officers pinned him to the ground. Ferguson tried to escape the police and shouted, "Brothers, come help me!" He sent letters to the New York City Police Commissioner and other officials complaining about his arrest, describing it as "viscous and racist," and claiming that he was brutalized by the officers who arrested him. The New York City Transit Authority investigated and dismissed the claims.
In September 1992, Ferguson was awarded $26,250 for his workers' compensation claim against Ademco Security Group. In April 1993, he insisted that he was still in pain and asked for the case to be reopened so that he could get more money for medical treatment. In the following weeks, Ferguson visited a Manhattan law firm for a consultation, and attorney Lauren Abramson said that she immediately felt uncomfortable and threatened by him. She asked a law clerk to sit in on the meeting because she did not want to be alone with Ferguson, which she had never done before. Ferguson was neatly dressed during the consultation, but he acted strangely and identified himself by a false name before providing his real name. Months later, he made threatening calls to members of the firm, claiming that they were discriminating against him. In one of the calls, he made reference to a massacre which occurred in California. The calls prompted the lawyers to start locking their inner office doors. Ferguson tried to have his workers' compensation claim reopened by the New York State Workers' Compensation Board, which reexamined the case due to his persistence, but it was ultimately rejected. The board placed him on a list of potentially dangerous people security guards were to watch for.
In April 1993, Ferguson moved to California in search of new career opportunities. He unsuccessfully applied for several jobs, including at a car wash where the manager laughed at him. Ferguson bought a Ruger P89 9×19mm pistol at a Turner's Outdoorsman in Long Beach for $400 after waiting the 15-day period required under California's gun laws. He presented himself as a California resident by providing a driver's license that he had received two months earlier, which had an address of the Long Beach motel where he stayed. He had been robbed by two men, so he started carrying the gun with him in a paper bag. Ferguson moved back to New York in May 1993 because, as he told a friend, he did not like competing with immigrants and Hispanics for jobs. His Flatbush landlord said that he appeared even more unstable upon his return, speaking in the third person about "some apocryphal-type doom scenario" which included black people rising up and striking down "their pompous rulers and oppressors." Ferguson started taking five showers a day and could be heard by neighbors repeatedly chanting at night "all the black people killing all the white people." His landlord became increasingly concerned about Ferguson's obsession with racism and apparently growing mental instability, and asked him to move out by the end of the month.