By Jonathan Allen
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Police arrested a person they stated set a lady on hearth whereas she seemed to be asleep on a New York Metropolis subway practice on Sunday morning, killing her.
The lady, who has not been recognized, sat motionlessly aboard a stationary F practice on the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue subway station in Brooklyn at about 7:30 a.m. (1230 GMT) when an unknown man calmly approached her and used a lighter to set her garments on hearth, the New York Police Division stated. Police stated there was no interplay earlier than the assault and they didn’t imagine the 2 folks knew one another.
The person acquired off the automobile as law enforcement officials on patrol within the station rushed to the blaze.
“What they noticed was an individual standing contained in the practice automobile absolutely engulfed in flames,” New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch stated at a press convention.
Cellphone video revealed on social media by a horrified onlooker confirmed a person sat on a bench on the platform just a few steps away from the burning girl, wearing a grey hoodie that resembles that worn by the suspect arrested afterward Sunday.
Requested whether or not the person watching from the bench was the attacker, police stated that responding officers had no purpose to assume he was a suspect after they rushed to the girl’s help.
The officers used hearth extinguishers to place out the fireplace and the girl was pronounced lifeless on the scene by emergency responders, police stated.
Police arrested a suspect, who has not been publicly recognized, as he rode the subway afterward Sunday.
Police stated they had been nonetheless investigating the sufferer’s identification and the explanation for the assault.
About 4 million journeys are taken every weekday on town’s subway, the place violent crime is comparatively uncommon. As of November, there had been 9 homicides reported on the subway in 2024, in comparison with 5 in the identical interval in 2023, in keeping with police information.
Earlier this month, a jury acquitted Daniel Penny of criminally negligent murder within the dying of Jordan Neely, a homeless former Michael Jackson impersonator, on town’s subway. Neely had been shouting angrily at passengers on a subway practice when Penny grabbed him from behind and restrained him in a chokehold for a number of minutes.
