Woman burnt to death in New York subway car as suspect watched

New York: A woman in a New York City subway car was killed early Sunday after another passenger set her on fire and then watched from a nearby bench in the Brooklyn station as she was burnt alive, the police said.

A suspect was arrested after the police disseminated clear photos - and a group of high school students recognised him on another subway car and called the police. He was taken into custody in Herald Square in Manhattan after the police stopped the subway, Chief of Transit Joseph Gulotta said at a press briefing.

“There is no room in a civilised society for people like him to be walking around,” Michael Kemper, Chief Security Officer of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said at the briefing.

Neither the victim nor the suspect was identified, though the police said they believe he arrived in the US from Guatemala in 2018.

It was the second killing overnight in the subway system. Shortly after midnight Sunday, police responded to an emergency at the 61st Street Woodside Station in Queens that resulted in the fatal stabbing of a 37-year-old man, according to the Associated Press. A 26-year-old man was also wounded in the incident, which continues to be investigated.

The incidents are likely to stoke ongoing fears that the city’s huge subway system is unsafe, despite the deployment this year of 750 National Guard officers and 250 additional police officers.

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The woman was killed on the F train at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue subway stop about 7:30am, the police said. As the train pulled into the station, a man walked “calmly” to the victim and “used what we believe to be a lighter to ignite the victim’s clothing, which became fully engulfed in a matter of seconds,” New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at the briefing.

The police said they didn’t believe the two knew each other, and there was no interaction between them.

An unconfirmed video posted on social media shows a person standing with flames billowing from her head and upper torso. A man can be seen sitting nearby on a bench apparently watching.

There were police officers at the station, who used a fire extinguisher to stop the flames, the police said.

“Unfortunately, it was too late,” Tisch said.

The police credited the recent installation of video cameras on every subway car in the system with producing photos of the suspect that led to his arrest.