Authorities are reportedly struggling to identify the woman who was set alight on a New York City subway train in a horrifying fatal attack due to the severity of her burns.
The woman was asleep on a stationary F train at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue subway station at 7:30 a.m. on Sunday when a man set her on fire in a reportedly random attack.
Police have struggled to pull fingerprints from the victim, leading to a delay in the identification process, prosecutors and sources told the New York Post.
The man accused of her murder, Sebastian Zapeta-Calil, 33, appeared at an arraignment hearing in Brooklyn criminal court on Tuesday afternoon dressed in a white jumpsuit.
Assistant District Attorney Ari Rottenberg told the court that the suspect used a shirt to fan the flames as the woman burned to death.
Zapeta-Calil, who is a Guatemalan citizen who entered the U.S. illegally according to federal immigration officials, was not required to enter a plea and did not speak at the hearing.
According to Rottenberg, Zapeta-Calil told detectives that he didn’t know what happened but identified himself in images of the attack, the Associated Press reported.
Zapeta-Calil’s lawyer, Ed Friedman, did not speak to reporters after the arraignment. The suspect is due back in court on Friday.
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez called the attack a “gruesome and senseless act of violence” and said it would be “met with the most serious consequences.”
Border patrol agents first found Zapeta-Calil in Sonoita, Arizona, in June 2018, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson Jeff Carter told CNN.
Agents then served him with an expedited removal and and he was sent to Guatemala six days later, Carter told the outlet.
However, the 33-year-old later unlawfully re-entered the US, according to Carter. Authorities don’t yet know when and where he re-entered the US.
Police previously said Zapeta-Calil silently approached the woman and lit her on fire using a lighter. He then left the train and sat on the platform to watch as she burned and ultimately died, according to police. Body camera footage from the responding officers helped identify him and he was taken into custody hours after the attack.
An MTA worker told the Post that it looked like the woman’s clothes were completely “burned off.”
“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,” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said previously.
Tisch described the incident as “one of the most depraved crimes one person could possibly commit against another human being.”
The victim was “fully engulfed in a matter of seconds,” Tisch said.
NYPD Chief of Transit Joseph Gulotta said Sunday that several officers had responded to the fire and one stayed to keep the crime scene “the way it’s supposed to be” while the others went to get fire extinguishers and transit workers.
The NYPD released a photo of the Zapeta-Calil on Sunday. They initially described him as a male between 25 and 30 years old, approximately five foot six, and weighs 150 pounds. They said he was last seen wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt, blue jeans, dark-colored knitted hat with a red stripe, and brown boots.
Zapeta-Calil was taken into custody as a person of interest after police received a tip off from three New York high school students who recognized the description and called 911, Tisch said.
He was confirmed to be on a moving train, which was stopped after police radioed ahead and walked from car to car to find him. He was also found with a lighter in his pocket.
“I want to thank the young people who called 911 to help,” Tisch said. “They saw something, and they said something and they did something. This is another example of great technology and even greater, old fashioned police work with a huge assist from the public.”
New York City Mayor Eric Adams also praised the bystanders who alerted police about the suspect.
“This type of depraved behavior has no place in our subways and we are committed to working hard to ensure there is swift justice for all victims of violent crime,” Adams wrote in an X post.
The crime — and the graphic video of it that ricocheted across social media — deepened a growing sense of unease among some New Yorkers about the safety of the subway system in a city where many residents take the subway multiple times each day.
Overall, according to authorities, crime is down in the transit system this year when compared to last year — major felonies declined six percent between January and November of this year and in 2023, data compiled by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority show. But murders are up, with nine killings this year through November compared to five in the same period last year.
Source: independent.co.uk