A 33-year-old man who set a stranger on fire at a New York City subway station was in the US illegally from Guatemala, according to the New York Post.
Sebastian Zapeta-Calil has been charged with murder and arson in the first degree after a woman burned to death on the F train in Brooklyn just before 7.30am on Sunday, police told DailyMail.com.
He was pictured perp walking out of the NYPD 60th Precinct building in Coney Island on Monday afternoon. The victim has not yet been identified.
Chilling footage showed the moment a man in a hoodie sat on the platform at Stillwell Avenue in Coney Island and watched as the woman became engulfed by flames.
Police said Zapeta-Calil lit the unnamed passenger on fire as she slept on board the train before sitting back to watch her burn as she leaned dying on the carriage door.
Zapeta-Calil can even be seen fanning the flames in one clip while other New Yorkers filmed the horror on their phones and cops walked on by.
Anonymous sources have told the New York Post that Zapeta-Calil was in the country illegally after previously being deported at the Arizona border in June 2018. It’s unclear how he got back into the US.
Zapeta-Calil appeared stony-faced as officers escorted him out of the Coney Island police custody building on Monday. He fixed his eyes on the ground while wearing police-issued white overalls.
The chilling videos of the subway arson attack caused an uproar online over how police at the scene appear to have responded.
As the woman burns and the suspect sits on a bench nearby, an NYPD officer can be seen walking by waving his hand over the scene in exasperation. He does not intervene to detain the suspect or help the victim.
NYPD Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch told a press conference that officers who responded were not aware the suspect was on the scene at the time.
Shocked social media users have blasted the police response – describing the behavior of cops caught on camera as ‘cowardly’ and ‘shameful’ while calling for them to be named or fired.
‘Police officer walks by. Doesn’t take his jacket off to smother the flames. Not his problem. Guess he doesn’t get paid too much. Can we find out who he is? His behavior is shameful,’ one person wrote on X.
‘I don’t know which is more wild. The fact she’s on fire and just standing there, or the guy who did it and is just sitting watching, the guy recording or the cop that just walked on by like all was normal,’ another said.
‘Many people freeze up in these situations, and some are just scared of getting hurt. The Police on the other hand, are there to protect and preserve life,’ another person chimed in.
‘They stood there and did nothing. One of them even got so fed up with the situation he waved his hands as if to say “I can’t be bothered with this anymore” and stormed off, as if an innocent woman dying was an inconvenience to him.’
‘The cop should go to jail for not helping. This is the oath they take. Coward,’ one person said, while another agreed, ‘that cop needs to be fired.’
Zapeta-Calil eventually boarded the F train again, and he was flagged by high schoolers at York Street Station in downtown Brooklyn who recognized him from police pictures distributed on Sunday.
NYPD officers alerted MTA, who stopped the train eight stops north from the sighting at Herald Square in Midtown Manhattan. Cops boarded the subway and detained Zapeta-Calil as he sat in a busy carriage, as caught in dramatic videos shared online.
Police Commissioner Tisch praised the police response to the heinous incident as ‘an example of great technology and even greater old fashioned police work’ during a press conference on Sunday night.
She added that detectives do not believe Zapeta-Calil and the victim knew each other, while giving more details about the ‘depraved crime’.
‘The suspect calmly walked up to the victim, who was in a seated position at the end of a subway car,’ she said. ‘The suspect used what we believe to be a lighter to ignite the victim’s clothing, which became fully engulfed in a matter of seconds.
‘Officers who were on patrol on an upper level of that station smelled and saw smoke and went to investigate. What they saw was a person standing inside a train car, fully engulfed in flames.
‘With the help of an MTA employee and a fire extinguisher, the flames were put out. Unfortunately it was too late, and the victim was pronounced (dead) on the scene.
‘Unbeknownst to the officers who responded, the suspect had stayed on the scene and was seated on a bench on a platform just outside the train car.
‘The body-worn cameras on the responding officers produced a very clear, detailed look at the killer.’
Zapeta-Calil was wearing the same ‘gray hoodie, distinct wool hat, paint-splattered pants and tan boots’ when officers tracked him down, and he also had a lighter in his pocket, the NYPD said.
Fox News described him as a Guatemalan migrant. This has not been confirmed by police.
