By The Associated Press’s Susan Haigh
In connection with the early morning death of a lady who may have dozed off on a stalled subway train before being purposefully set on fire by an unknown guy, New York City police said Sunday they had detained a person of interest.
Three high school students who recognized the man reported him to transit police, who then arrested the culprit. They had seen pictures of the suspect that had been widely disseminated by police from surveillance and police body cam footage.
According to New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who called the case one of the most heinous crimes a person could possibly conduct against another human being, New Yorkers came through once more.
According to Tisch, at around 7:30 a.m., the suspect and the woman—who have not been named—were traveling to the end of the Brooklyn subway line without interacting with one another.
Surveillance footage from the metro car revealed that the man calmly approached the victim, who was sitting still and might have been sleeping, after the train had stopped and used what looked like a lighter to light her clothes on fire. In just a few seconds, the woman’s clothing was completely enveloped, Tisch added.
The two are not thought to have known one another by the police.
The woman was found burning in the center of the subway vehicle by officers on a routine sweep at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue subway station after they smelled and spotted smoke. The woman was pronounced deceased at the site by emergency medical workers after the fire was put out.
Tisch stated that the suspect had stayed on the scene, sitting on a bench on the subway platform, just outside the train car, without the cops’ knowledge. The cops’ body cameras captured a clear, in-depth view of the suspect, and the pictures were made public.
Chief of Transit Joseph Gulotta stated that after the teenagers called 911, other transit officers located the man on a different subway train and radioed ahead to the next station, where additional officers kept the train doors closed, searched every car, and eventually apprehended him without any problems. Tisch claimed that when the man was arrested, he had a lighter in his pocket.
According to Gulotta, the inquiry is still ongoing and will look into the suspect’s past as well as whether the woman was homeless.
aboard Sunday, the incident was the second fatality aboard a New York subway.
When police arrived at the 61st Street-Woodside Station in Queens at 12:35 a.m. to answer to an emergency call regarding an attack in progress, they discovered a 26-year-old male with numerous slashes all over his body and a 37-year-old man with a knife wound to his torso. According to authorities, the younger man was in stable condition, while the elder man was declared deceased at a nearby hospital.
There was an ongoing investigation.
In response to a string of high-profile crimes on city trains, New York Governor Kathy Hochul sent men of the New York National Guard to the city’s subway system this year to assist police in conducting sporadic screenings of passengers’ baggage for weapons. Recently, Hochul sent out more personnel to assist with patrol over the holidays.
According to Michael Kemper, chief security officer for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Hochul approved financing almost a year ago to equip all train cars in the New York subway system with video cameras. On Sunday, he and other officials attributed the speedy pursuit of the perpetrator to the cameras.
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