A Guatemalan immigrant was arrested Sunday morning on suspicion of setting a sleeping subway passenger on fire in Brooklyn, leaving the innocent victim alive in what the police chief called “one of the most despicable crimes a human being can commit.” I watched as he was killed.
The brutal murder, which occurred around 7:30 a.m. on an idling F train at the Coney Island Stillwell Avenue station, shocked commuters, MTA employees and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch. He said Sunday that the heinous crime had “taken lives.” An innocent New Yorker. ”
“As the train entered the station, the suspect calmly walked up to the victim, who was sitting on the edge of the subway car, and used what appeared to be a lighter to ignite the victim's clothing, causing it to completely burn out.” It swallowed me up in a matter of seconds,” Tisch said at a news conference.
He said officers on patrol smelled and identified the smoke and tracked it down to the woman, who was covered in flames.
They extinguished the fire, but the victim died at the scene.
Horrifying footage obtained by the newspaper showed the suspect calmly watching as flames consumed an unidentified woman standing inside the open door of a subway car.
A traffic policeman passed by, pulled out a radio and seemed to be saying something as he descended the platform.
As the officers passed, the suspect stood up as if to leave, but the footage cut out.
In another video, a police officer yells at the assembled crowd: Did anyone see anything? Smoke billowed from inside the subway car.
As officers swarmed, the suspect sat arrogantly on a nearby bench, at one point raising his hood just before officers spoke to him.
“Do you have a favor? Walk over there,” the officer said, gesturing to the platform on his radio. “I want you to clean up this space.”
The man stood up and left the scene.
“Unknown to the responding officers, the suspect remained at the scene and was sitting on a bench on the platform just outside the vehicle,” Tisch said.
“The responding officers' body-worn cameras provided a very clear and detailed view of the killer.”
Later that day, three high school students called police and saw the man seen in images released by the NYPD at the F train's Jay and York Street station, Tisch and NYPD Transportation Commissioner Joseph Gulotta said. He claimed to have seen it.
When traffic officers responded to the call, they found the suspect already on another train leaving the station, wearing the same gray hoodie, woolen hat, and paint-splattered pants he wore when he allegedly set the woman on fire. It turned out that it was.
Police were notified in advance and stopped the train at Herald Square. They then moved from car to car until they spotted and arrested the suspect, police officials said.
Tisch said the suspect had a lighter in his pocket when he was picked up.
“I want to thank the young people who called 911 for help,” Tisch said. “They saw something, they said something, they did something.”
Mr. Gulotta echoed similar comments, calling the arrests “a great joint effort between the public and the police.”
Police do not believe the immigrant and the victim knew each other before the killing, Gulotta added.
Early in the morning, police, firefighters and medical examiners in white Tyvek suits cordoned off the scene and scoured the tracks for evidence.
Around 1 p.m., authorities removed the body bag containing the woman's body from the train and placed it on a stretcher. Then they put it in the autopsy van and moved it inside the car.
The woman has not yet been identified.
