Guatemalan migrant arrested after woman set on fire, killed on subway

(Daily Callers News Foundation) – A Guatemalan migrant allegedly set a sleeping woman ablaze Sunday morning, killing her.

The NYPD discovered a woman engulfed in flames on the F train around 7:30 a.m. at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue subway station, New York City Police Department (NYPD) Commissioner Jessica Tisch said in a press conference.

Officials believe a man walked up to the victim, who was seated on the subway, as the train pulled into the station and used a lighter to set the woman’s clothing on fire. Officers on patrol at an upper level of the station saw smoke and went to investigate and found “a person standing inside the train car fully engulfed in flames,” Tisch said.

The victim was pronounced dead at the scene.

The 33-year-old Guatemalan suspect entered the U.S. in 2018, officials said, according to the New York Post. The woman’s identity remains unknown.

The suspect stayed on the scene, unbeknownst to the responding officers, watching the woman ignite in flames, the police commissioner said. A videocirculating on social media appears to show the suspect sitting on a bench outside the subway car watching the victim.

The suspect was seen by multiple civilians who called 9-1-1 after officials released a photo of him, Tisch said. One witness spotted the man riding another train, causing police to radio for the train to be stopped in order to detain him.

Officers walked between subway cars and arrested the man, who was found with a lighter in his pocket, without further incident, Tisch stated.

Liquor bottles were found surrounding the woman, although it was not immediately clear if the bottles had any impact on the incident, the New York Post reported, citing law enforcement sources.

The suspect has yet to be charged.

Service on the F train was suspended well into the afternoon as officials continued to investigate the scene. The woman’s body was reportedly removed from the station around 1:00 p.m.

An MTA worker told the NYP the woman’s clothes appeared to have been “burnt off.”

“I was just walking by. The cops was there already. I didn’t see her in flames but that’s what I heard. It was out. They shut the lights off [in the car] so nobody could see,” the worker told the outlet.

“It’s scary,” Alex Gureyev, a Brooklyn construction manager, told the Post. “It’s going down hill a bit. Everybody keeps saying it’s going back to the seventies. It’s a frequent occurrence — not like this, setting people on fire — but like the mugging, the killings, the fighting, the shootings, they’re really common nowadays. [It’s] very bad.”

Murders on the New York City subways have increased at least 60% this year, according to NYPD data from September, the Post previously reported.