Woman fatally set on fire in New York subway train

NEW YORK (Reuters): Police arrested a man they said set a woman on fire while she appeared to be asleep on a New York City subway train on Sunday morning, killing her.

The woman, who has not been identified, sat motionlessly aboard a stationary F train at 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 clothes on fire, the New York Police Department said.

Police said there was no interaction before the attack and they did not believe the two people knew each other.

The man got off the car as police officers on patrol in the station rushed to the blaze.

“What they saw was a person standing inside the train car fully engulfed in flames,” New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a press conference.

A cellphone video published on social media by a horrified onlooker showed a man sitting on a bench on the platform a few steps away from the burning woman, dressed in a gray hoodie that resembles that worn by the suspect arrested later on Sunday.

Asked whether the man watching from the bench was the attacker, police said that responding officers had no reason to think he was a suspect when they rushed to the woman’s aid.

The officers used fire extinguishers to put out the fire and the woman was pronounced dead at the scene by emergency responders, police said.

Police arrested a suspect, who has not been publicly identified, as he rode the subway later on Sunday.

Police said they were still investigating the victim’s identity and the reason for the attack.

About 4 million trips are taken each weekday on the city’s subway, where violent crime is relatively rare. As of November, there had been nine homicides reported on the subway in 2024, compared to five in the same period in 2023, according to police data.

Earlier this month, a jury acquitted Daniel Penny of criminally negligent homicide in the death of Jordan Neely, a homeless former Michael Jackson impersonator, on the city’s subway. Neely had been shouting angrily at passengers on a subway train when Penny grabbed him from behind and restrained him in a chokehold for several minutes.