NEW YORK (Reuters) – Police have arrested a man they say set a woman on fire while she appeared to be sleeping on a New York City subway on Sunday morning, killing her.
The woman, who has not been identified, was sitting motionless aboard a stationary F train at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue subway station in Brooklyn at about 7:30 a.m. (12:30 GMT) when an unknown man approached her and used a lighter to restrain her to keep. clothing on fire, New York police said. Police said there was no interaction before the attack and they did not believe the two people knew each other.
The man got out of the car as police officers on patrol at the station rushed to the fire.
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“What they saw was a person completely engulfed in flames in the train car,” New York Police Chief Jessica Tisch said at a news conference.
Officers used fire extinguishers to extinguish the fire and the woman was pronounced dead at the scene by emergency responders, police said.
Police arrested a suspect, who has not been publicly identified, while riding the subway later Sunday.
Police said they are still investigating the identity of the victim and the reason for the attack.
About 4 million trips are made every weekday on the city’s subway, where violent crime is relatively rare. There were nine homicides reported in the metro in November 2024, compared to five in the same period in 2023, according to police data.
Earlier this month, a jury acquitted Daniel Penny of negligent homicide in the death of Jordan Neely, a homeless former Michael Jackson impersonator, on the city’s subway. Neely had shouted angrily at passengers on a subway train when Penny grabbed him from behind and put him in a chokehold for several minutes.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Diane Craft)
