NEW YORK: 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 7:30am (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.

Cellphone video published on social media by a horrified onlooker showed a man sat 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.

Published in Dawn, December 24th, 2024