Woman Killed by Being Set on Fire in NYC Subway – Suspect Is “Migrant” From Guatemala

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A migrant from Guatemala has been arrested for allegedly lighting a sleeping subway rider on fire in Brooklyn on Sunday morning — then watching as his innocent victim burned to death in what the New York’s top cop called “one of the most depraved crimes one person could possibly commit.”

The savage killing — which happened at about 7:30 a.m. on an idling 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 “took the life of an innocent New Yorker.”

“As the train pulled into the station, the suspect calmly walked up to the victim, who was in a seated position at the end of a subway car … and used what we believe to be a lighter to ignite the victim’s clothing, which became fully engulfed in a matter of seconds,” Tisch said at a press conference.

Patrolling cops smelled and saw the smoke, then found the flame-covered woman, the commissioner said.  

They extinguished the blaze, but the woman died at the scene.

Horrifying video obtained by The Post showed the suspect calmly looking on as flames consumed the still-unidentified woman, who stood inside the open subway car doors.

A transit cop walked by, and seemed to pull out a radio and say something as they continued down the platform.

After the cop passed, the suspect got up from the bench — then the clip cut off.

Another video shared on social media shows the suspect get off the bench and walk over to the open subway door, where he starts fanning the burning woman with a piece of clothing — first with two hands on the cloth and then with just one.

In other footage, cops yelled to the gathered crowd, “Did anybody see anything? Did anybody see anything?” as smoke poured from inside the subway car.

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

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“Do me a favor? Walk down there,” the cop said, motioning down the platform with his radio. “I need this space cleared up.”

The man stood up, then left the scene.

“Unbeknownst to the officers who responded, the suspect had stayed on the scene and was seated on a bench on the platform just outside the train car,” Tisch said.

“The body-worn cameras on the responding officers produced a very clear, detailed look at the killer.”

Later that day, three high schoolers called police to say they saw the man at the Jay and York Street station on the F line, according to Tisch and the NYPD’s Chief of Transit, Joseph Gulotta.

When transit officers responded they found the suspect already riding another train — and wearing the same gray hoodie, wool hat and paint-splattered pants he had on when he allegedly torched the woman.

Cops called ahead and halted the train at Herald Square. Then, they went from car to car until they found the suspect and arrested him, 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 to help,” Tisch said. “They saw something, and they said something, and they did something.”

Gulotta echoed her comments, calling the arrest “amazing work done by the public and the police working together.”  

Police believe the suspect did not know the victim before he attacked her.

The suspect entered the country and was detained by border patrol agents in Arizona in June 2018 — and so far authorities have not found a past criminal record for him in New York City, law enforcement sources said.

Authorities were still working to confirm whether he is in the country legally, the sources said. 

On Sunday morning, cops, firefighters and medical examiner personnel clad in white Tyvek suits combed the tracks for evidence after they cordoned off the area.

Around 1 p.m., authorities carried a body bag containing the woman’s corpse out of the train and placed it on a gurney. Then they wheeled it over to a medical examiner van and moved it inside.

“It’s incredible,” one shocked commuter said as he witnessed the sad proceedings.

MTA workers were similarly stunned by the savage killing.

“It just looked like all the clothes were burnt off,” one worker told The Post. “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.

“That s–t is crazy — it’s only three days until Christmas,” he added. “That’s messed up.”

Other commuters stopped in their tracks to take in the stunning scene.

“It’s scary,” Alex Gureyev, a 39-year-old construction manager from Brooklyn, told The Post.

“It’s going downhill a bit,” he continued. “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.”

The poor woman’s fiery death came just as Gov. Kathy Hochul sent 250 more National Guard troops into the Big Apple’s subway system for the holiday rush — swelling its $100 million subway deployment to 1,000 troops.

Hochul has insisted that her controversial March deployment of National Guard troops into the subways led to a dramatic drop in transit crime.

But despite the governor’s efforts, subway murders rose by at least 60% this year, according to data collected in September. 

Eight people were killed on subway cars or in stations as of Sept. 8 — up from just five during the same period last year, NYPD data showed.  

And the F train terror was just one of several assaults during a bloody 24-hour period for the city underground.

Just after midnight Sunday, an argument between five men on a southbound 7 train at Woodside Avenue and 61st Street in Queens turned deadly when a 69-year-old man stabbed one person in the chest and another in the face, police said. 

Authorities took the conductor to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, where he was in stable condition.

The suspect was not arrested in the attack, police added. 

The man who was stabbed in the chest died at the hospital, police said. The suspect was in custody awaiting charges.  

Several hours later, at about 4:30 a.m., a northbound D train was put out of service after an angry passenger threw a can at the 38-year-old conductor, police said.