A man who suffered severe burns after someone threw burning liquid on him on the subway on Saturday told The Washington Post from the hospital that he jumped in front of his fiancée to protect her.
Petrit Aliyazi, 23, lay in a bed at NewYork-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Hospital, his upper body completely bandaged, still recovering from the shock of the random attack that took place earlier in the day.
Doctors told him he had burns over 30 percent of his body and would need to remain in hospital for at least a week to recover.
It was worth it to protect his fiancée, he said.
“I am protecting my fiancée with my body,” he told the Post.
“I’m not in as much pain now,” he said, thanks to the medication he was given, “but before that… oh my God, it was so hard.”
Aliyaji, who is from Albania, said he was on the Line 1 train with his fiance and cousin on a trip to see the Statue of Liberty when they arrived at Varick Street station in lower Manhattan around 2:45 p.m.
The suspect, later identified as 49-year-old Niall Taylor, then entered the vehicle with a cup of liquid in his hand.
“He had a cup,” Ali Jaji said, pointing to one on his bedside table, “like this one, maybe a smaller cup, with some kind of oil in it, and he started a fire and dumped it all out.”
He made a motion to throw the liquid from the cup.
Aliyaji said he was able to turn around to protect his fiancee and cousin, who were sitting next to him.
His shirt caught fire, so he quickly slapped himself with his hands to put out the fire and ran off the train.
“I touched myself to put out the fire,” he said.
“So it was burning while I was running,” the victim added.
Taylor had also fled the train, and Alijaj feared he would return with more flammable liquid.
At one point, Ali Jaji managed to tear off his smoldering T-shirt.
At first, he didn’t think his burns were that bad, but when he arrived at the hospital with burns to his neck, ears, chest, arms and left hand, he noticed blisters all over his body.
After the incident, he was seen dousing his burns with cold water from a New York City Fire Department fire truck hose.
He told the Post that doctors don’t yet know the extent of the burns and need to determine “how deep into the skin the fire went.”
“The doctor said 30 percent of his body was burned,” he said.
“But I don’t think it’s 30 percent,” he adds with an optimistic laugh. “Maybe it’s 10 percent.”
At the hospital, the inside of Alijaji’s ear was found to be covered with huge, painful-looking blisters.
“I can still hear it,” he proudly told the Post.
Thankfully, he said, his face was uninjured and he had managed to hide it.
Alijaji said he has been living in New York for about a year.
Taylor was arrested shortly after the attack after police tracked a cellphone he picked up from the platform during his escape, according to police and sources.
He was arrested at the intersection of Canal and Renwick Streets, about five blocks away, near the entrance to the Holland Tunnel.
Saturday’s attack marked the second time in four months that a flaming liquid was thrown at a strap attendant, following a similar incident in February.
Police are investigating whether Taylor was also involved, a police source said.
