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The shaming of New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) continued as her spiel on subway safety followed a victim being set ablaze and burned to death, allegedly by a foreign national.

(Video Credit: ABC7NY)

Sunday in Brooklyn, New York, an as yet unidentified woman was believed to be asleep aboard the Coney Island F train when a man was said to have approached her with a lighter and set her clothes on fire before taking a seat on the platform to watch the heinous crime play out.

Eyewitness reports and camera footage from the scene helped NYPD officers track down a suspect on another train, said to be 33-year-old Guatemalan national Sebastian Zapeta, who, according to an NYPD source who spoke with Fox News, had entered the United States illegally in 2018.

Within hours, Hochul had taken to social media to boast about making subways safer, earning her more than a devastating community note to accompany her photo op trip through the subways.

“In March, I took action to make our subways safer for the millions of people who take the trains each day,” said the governor. “Since deploying the @NationalGuardNY to support @NYPDnews and @MTA safety efforts and adding cameras to all subways cars, crime is going down, and ridership is going up.”

However, as ABC7NY detailed, the woman burned alive wasn’t even the only victim over the weekend as subway violence also included a stabbing during a robbery and two people being shot.

During a press conference about the victim set on fire, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch explained, “As the train pulled into the station, the suspect calmly walked up to the victim.”

“The suspect used what we believe to be a lighter to ignite the victim’s clothing, which became fully engulfed in a matter of seconds,” she added before detailing that patrol officers at the station became aware of smoke and discovered the woman and helped to extinguish the flames with an MTA worker after a fire extinguisher was located, but the victim was pronounced dead.

Video from the scene showed the man who was later taken into custody seated on the platform watching the fire before approaching the victim and appearing to fan the flames as an officer hurriedly walked by on the platform.

Fox News detailed that Zapeta had a prior arrest in Arizona, but had no further details on any alleged crime committed.

While taking the brunt of her disconnected post on social media, Hochul, who’d been confronted with crime statistics during a press conference Wednesday, tried another go at grandstanding on safety when she made note of the suspect taken into custody by crediting new security cameras for helping law enforcement “find the suspect and arrest him.”

“Make no mistake: any crime is one too many, even with subway crime going down. We are continuing to surge personnel and resources to make our subways safer,” prompting further criticism over her attempting to “take a lap.”

In his own statement on the tragedy, New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D), who had similarly boasted of crime statistics the morning UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was assassinated in Manhattan, said, “Grateful to the young New Yorkers and transit officers who stepped up to help our NYPD make a quick arrest following this morning’s heinous and deadly subway attack.”

“This type of depraved behavior has no place in our subways and we are committed to working hard to ensure there is swift justice for all victims of violent crime,” he added.

Elsewhere, Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R) was said to have called for the “death penalty” for the suspect should he be found guilty of the crime.

Kevin Haggerty
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