A woman has died after being set on fire by an apparent stranger on a New York City subway train. Police arrested a suspect who is alleged to have sat watching his victim burn.
The woman, who has not been identified, was sitting on the motionless train in a station at about 7.30am (12.30pm GMT) on Sunday when a man calmly used a lighter to set her clothes on fire, the New York Police Department (NYPD) said.
The man left the train as police on patrol in the station rushed to help. The officers used extinguishers to put out the fire and the woman was pronounced dead at the scene by the emergency services.
“What [the officers] saw was a person standing inside the train car fully engulfed in flames,” Jessica Tisch, the NYPD commissioner, told a press conference.
The attack happened on an F train in Brooklyn
Footage filmed by an onlooker and published on social media showed a man sitting on a bench on the platform a few steps away from the burning woman.
Asked whether the man watching from the bench was the attacker, police said officers had no reason to think he was a suspect when they came to the woman’s aid.
The suspect who has not been named was arrested on the subway later in the day.
An onlooker filmed the woman burning to death on the train
There was no interaction between the man and the woman before the attack and the pair do not appear to have known each other, police said.
Police said they were still investigating the victim’s identity and the reason for the attack, which took place on an “F” train at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue subway station in Brooklyn.
About four million trips are taken each weekday on the New York City subway, where violent crime is relatively rare.
There were nine murders reported on the subway in 2024, up to November, 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 train when Mr Penny grabbed him from behind and restrained him in a chokehold for several minutes.