Guatemalan migrant accused of setting fire to subway driver in New York

Guatemalan migrant accused of setting fire to subway driver in New York

A Guatemalan migrant was arrested for allegedly setting a sleeping subway rider on fire in Brooklyn on Sunday morning – and then watching his innocent victim burn to death in what the police commissioner called “one of the most depraved crimes a human being could possibly commit.” designated.

The gruesome murder — which took place around 7:30 a.m. on a stationary 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 “desperate life of a human being.” innocent New Yorker.”

A suspect has been arrested in connection with the deadly arson attack on the subway on Sunday. GNMiller/NYPost
Officials said the 33-year-old suspect came to the United States from Guatemala in 2018. Instagram/Coronavirusny

“As the train pulled into the station, the suspect calmly walked towards the victim who was sitting at the end of a subway car… and used, we suspect, a lighter to set fire to the victim’s clothing, which burned completely. “Devoured within seconds,” Tisch said at a press conference.

Patrol officers smelled and saw the smoke and then followed it to the woman covered in flames, the commissioner said.

They put out the fire, but the victim died at the scene.


Follow the latest on the migrant accused of burning a woman on the subway:


Officials said the 33-year-old suspect came to the United States from Guatemala in 2018. Sources said he was arrested by Border Patrol agents in Arizona in June of that year. His legal status was not immediately clear Sunday evening.

He received a transit summons in May 2023, but otherwise his criminal record in New York City was largely clean, sources said. At the time of the violation, he was living in a shelter on Randall’s Island.

A chilling video obtained by The Post showed the suspect calmly watching as flames consumed the yet-unidentified woman standing in the open door of the subway car.

A traffic police officer passed by and appeared to pull out a radio and say something as they walked down the platform.

After the officer passed, the suspect stood up as if to walk away – then the clip was cut off.

Police arrested the suspect on Sunday morning. Instagram/Coronavirusny

In another video, police officers shouted to the gathered crowd: “Did anyone see anything? “Did anyone see anything?” as smoke poured from inside the subway car.

The suspect sat brazenly on a nearby bench as officers crowded around him, at one point pulling up his hood just before an officer spoke to him.

“Do me a favor? “Go down there,” the police officer said, pointing his radio at the platform. “I have to clear this room.”

The man stood up and then left the scene.

“Unbeknownst to the officers who responded, the suspect remained at the scene, sitting on a bench on the platform directly in front of the train car,” Tisch said.

The suspect allegedly sat and watched the victim after the gruesome attack. Received from the post office

“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 said they had seen the man pictured in the images released by the NYPD at the F Line’s Jay and York Street station, according to Tisch and the NYPD chief. Transportation Joseph Gulotta.

When transit officers responded to that call, they found the suspect already on another train leaving the station — wearing the same gray hoodie, wool hat, and paint-spattered pants he was wearing when he allegedly set the woman on fire .

The suspect sat brazenly on a nearby bench as officers crowded around him, at one point pulling up his hood just before an officer spoke to him. Instagram/Coronavirusny

Police officers called ahead and stopped the train in Herald Square. They then went from car to car until they found and arrested the suspect, police officials said.

Tisch said the suspect had a lighter in his pocket when he was arrested.

“I want to thank the young people who called 911 to help,” Tisch said. “They saw something, and they said something, and they did something.”

Gulotta reiterated her comments, calling the arrest an “amazing work of the public and police working together.”

The victim died at the scene. Gregory P. Mango

Police do not believe the migrant and the victim knew each other before the murder, Gulotta added.

Earlier in the morning, police, firefighters and medical examiners in white Tyvek suits combed the tracks for evidence after cordoning off the area.

Around 1 p.m., authorities carried a body bag containing the woman’s body off the train and placed it on a stretcher. They then rolled it to a medical exam cart and transported it inside.

The woman has not yet been identified.

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