A Guatemalan migrant has been arrested for allegedly lighting a sleeping subway rider on fire in Brooklyn on Sunday morning — then watching as his innocent victim burned to death in what the police commissioner called “one of the most depraved crimes one person could possibly commit.”
The savage killing — which happened at about 7:30 a.m. on an idling F train at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station — shocked commuters, MTA workers and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who said Sunday that the heinous crime “took the life of an innocent New Yorker.”
“As the train pulled into the station, the suspect calmly walked up to the victim, who was in a seated position at the end of a subway car … and used what we believe to be a lighter to ignite the victim’s clothing, which became fully engulfed in a matter of seconds,” Tisch said at a press conference.
Patrolling cops smelled and saw the smoke, then followed it to the flame-covered woman, the commissioner said.
They extinguished the blaze, but the victim died at the scene.
Officials said the 33-year-old suspect came to the US in 2018 from Guatemala. He was detained by border patrol agents in Arizona in June of that year, sources said. His legal status wasn’t immediately clear Sunday night.
He received a transit summons in May 2023, but his criminal record in New York City was largely clean otherwise, sources said. He was living at a shelter on Randall’s Island at the time of the infraction.
Horrifying video obtained by The Post showed the suspect calmly looking on as flames consumed the still-unidentified woman, who stood inside the open subway car door.
A transit cop walked by, and seemed to pull out a radio and say something as they continued down the platform.
After the cop passed, the suspect got up as if to walk away — then the clip cut off.
In another video, cops yelled to the gathered crowd, “Did anybody see anything? Did anybody see anything?” as smoke poured from inside the subway car.
The suspect brazenly sat on a nearby bench as cops huddled around, pulling his hood up at one point just before an officer spoke to him.
“Do me a favor? Walk down there,” the cop said, motioning down the platform with his radio. “I need this space cleared up.”
The man stood up, then left the scene.
“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,” Tisch said.
“The body-worn cameras on the responding officers produced a very clear, detailed look at the killer.”
Later in day, three high schoolers called police to say they saw the man pictured in images released by the NYPD at the Jay and York Street station on the F line, according to Tisch and the NYPD’s Chief of Transit Joseph Gulotta.
When transit officers responded to that call, they found the suspect already on another train leaving the station — and wearing the same gray hoodie, wool hat and paint-splattered pants he’d been wearing when he allegedly torched the woman.
Cops called ahead and halted the train at Herald Square. Then, they went from car to car until they found the suspect and arrested him, police officials said.
Tisch said the suspect had a lighter in his pocket when he was picked up.
“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.”
Gulotta echoed her comments, calling the arrest “amazing work done by the public and the police working together.”
Police don’t believe the migrant and the victim knew each other before the killing, Gulotta added.
Earlier in the morning, cops, firefighters and medical examiner personnel clad in white Tyvek suits combed the tracks for evidence after they cordoned off the area.
Around 1 p.m., authorities carried a body bag containing the woman’s corpse out of the train and placed it on a gurney. Then they wheeled it over to a medical examiner van and moved it inside.
The woman has not yet been identified.