In a series of pre-dawn raids yesterday, NFTA and FBI SWAT teams grabbed two alleged gang members with criminal records and charged them with the shooting of another alleged gang member late last Friday inside the University Metro Rail station.
Arrested were Arkeil Gaskin, who is charged with the actual shooting, and Allen Jackson, who is charged as an accomplice. NFTA Chief George Gast says Jackson was already on the run on an arrest warrant. Gast says the entire sequence of events was caught on surveillance cameras, including the chase of the victim and his shooting inside the station as riders ran.
"Our detectives do a very good job in exactly that. Having a face doesn't always lead to an arrest," Gast said.
"There's a lot of investigation that goes on between finding that image on a camera and, you are absolutely correct, we got images from a number of cameras in the area, both NFTA cameras and University of Buffalo cameras."
The cameras showed the victim being thrown into a car and the getaway car getting lost and winding up in the bus loop of the rail station where police grabbed him for an ambulance ride to ECMC and detained the others for questioning. The pair of shooters escaped across South Campus.
The victim remains in ECMC in stable condition.
The chief refuses to say the shooting is gang-related.
