exclusive photos
Guatemalan migrant arrested for setting sleeping NYC subway rider on fire, watching her burn to death: cops
By
Joe Marino, Larry Celona, Steve Janoski and Dorian Geiger
Published Dec. 22, 2024
Updated Dec. 22, 2024, 6:05 p.m. ET
A Guatemalan migrant has been arrested for allegedly lighting a sleeping subway rider on fire in Brooklyn on Sunday morning — then watching as his innocent victim burned to death in what the police commissioner called “one of the most depraved crimes one person could possibly commit.”
The savage killing — which happened at about 7:30 a.m. on an idling F train at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station — shocked commuters, MTA workers and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who said Sunday that the heinous crime “took the life of an innocent New Yorker.”
“As the train pulled into the station, the suspect calmly walked up to the victim, who was in a seated position at the end of a subway car … and used what we believe to be a lighter to ignite the victim’s clothing, which became fully engulfed in a matter of seconds,” Tisch said at a press conference.
Patrolling cops smelled and saw the smoke, then followed it to the flame-covered woman, the commissioner said.
They extinguished the blaze, but the victim died at the scene.
Officials said the 33-year-old suspect came to the US in 2018 from Guatemala. He was detained by border patrol agents in Arizona in June of that year, sources said. His legal status wasn’t immediately clear Sunday night.
He received a transit summons in May 2023, but his criminal record in New York City was largely clean otherwise, sources said. He was living at a shelter on Randall’s Island at the time of the infraction.
Horrifying video obtained by The Post showed the suspect calmly looking on as flames consumed the still-unidentified woman, who stood inside the open subway car door.