NEW YORK (Reuters) – Police have arrested a man who 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, whose identity has not been revealed, sat motionless on board the F train parked at the Coney Island-Stilwell Avenue subway station in Brooklyn around 7:30 a.m. (1230 GMT) when an unidentified man approached her and used a lighter to set her on fire. The New York Police Department said the clothes caught fire. Police said there was no interaction prior to the attack, and they do not believe the two people knew each other.
The man got out of the car while police officers patrolling the station rushed to the fire.
“What they saw was a person standing inside the train car, completely engulfed in flames,” New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said in a press conference.
Police said officers used fire extinguishers to put out the fire, and the woman was pronounced dead at the scene by emergency responders.
Police arrested a suspect, whose identity has not been publicly revealed, while riding the subway later on Sunday.
Police said they are still investigating the identity of the victim and the reason for the attack.
About 4 million trips are taken each weekday on the city's subways, where violent crime is relatively rare. As of November, nine subway homicides had been reported in 2024, compared to five in the same period in 2023, according to police data.
Earlier this month, a jury acquitted Danielle Penny of criminally negligent homicide in the death of Jordan Neely, a former homeless Michael Jackson impersonator, in the city's subway. Neely was angrily shouting at passengers on the subway when Penny grabbed him from behind and held him in a chokehold for several minutes.
