A man who allegedly set a woman on fire inside a New York subway train and then watched her die is facing charges of murder and arson, police said Monday.
The suspect, identified by police as Sebastian Zapeta, was taken into custody hours after the woman died on Sunday morning.
Zapeta, 33, is a Guatemalan citizen who entered the US illegally after he had been previously removed in 2018, said Jeff Carter, a spokesperson for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
His address was a shelter for unhoused men with substance abuse problems in Brooklyn.
The attack took place at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station at about 7.30am on Sunday, according to the New York police department. Police said the man threw a lighter on the woman, who appeared motionless or sleeping on surveillance footage, and she became engulfed in flames in seconds.
Police say the man then remained at the scene, watching her burn from a bench on the subway platform as police and a transit worker tried to extinguish the flames.
The woman’s clothing “became fully engulfed in a matter of seconds”, said Jessica Tisch, the New York City police commissioner.
“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, and the body-worn cameras on the responding officers produced a very clear detailed look at the killer,” Tisch said.
The woman was pronounced dead at the scene. Police have not yet released her identity.
Police body-camera and surveillance images were key to apprehending the suspect, investigators said. And authorities credited three high-school-age New Yorkers who recognized the suspect and called the police.
“Our officers … stopped that train in Herald Square and were able to keep the doors closed, walk the train and place this very dangerous individual in custody,” the police chief of transit, Joseph Gulotta, said.
The suspect was found with a lighter in his pocket, the commissioner said.
It was unclear if Zapeta has an attorney or when he would be arraigned.
New York’s Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, took steps earlier this year to improve the safety of New York City’s subways and is facing political heat for claiming on social media just hours after the woman was killed that crime had dropped.
In an X post on Sunday, Hochul claimed that subway crime had decreased since she deployed the national guard to help address it.
“In March, I took action to make our subways safer for the millions of people who take the trains each day,” Hochul’s post read. “Since deploying the [national guard] to support [New York police] and [Metropolitan Transportation Authority] safety efforts and adding cameras to all subway cars, crime is going down, and ridership is going up.”
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That followed a press conference last week during which the governor said subway crime was down 42% since January 2021 and discussed plans to send 750 national guard members into the subways to help curb holiday crime.
A video circulating on social media appeared to show the suspect in Sunday’s subway killing on a train at some point saying in Spanish: “I drink my beer and live what I am – as long as people don’t bother me, I don’t bother anyone. Why do fucking people have problems with me? That’s the problem. I don’t give a fuck.”
The timing of Hochul’s tweets over subway safety drew criticism, with many users of the social platform responding with video clips of Sunday’s murder.
Melissa DeRosa, who served under the former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, said the woman who was murdered was not the only person to have died on the subway system on Sunday.
“2 people were murdered in the subway today,” DeRosa wrote. “The governor of the state of ny is a tourist who can’t even bother to read a newspaper while she’s in town.”
The second case to which DeRosa referred unfolded hours before – when one man was stabbed to death and another seriously injured on a 7 train in Queens.
As of November, there had been nine homicides reported on the subway in 2024, compared with five over the same period in 2023, according to police data.
But subway crime is likely to become a dominant issue as both Hochul and the New York City mayor, Eric Adams – who is facing federal bribery charges – prepare for re-election campaigns.
Earlier in December, a Manhattan jury acquitted the former marine Daniel Penny of criminally negligent homicide in the death of Jordan Neely, a homeless man who had been menacing subway train passengers when Penny grabbed him from behind and restrained him in a chokehold for several minutes.
