Suspect of subway murder of woman set on fire apprehended

NEW YORK CITY: An unidentified suspect from Guatemala was captured by New York police, following a brutal killing in which the victim was burned alive on a subway train, CNN reported on Monday.

“This type of depraved behaviour 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,” wrote New York City Mayor Eric Adams on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Surveillance footage shows the suspect watching the victim burn from a station bench just outside the train car, after he ignited the blanket the victim had wrapped around her. The lighter was found on the suspect after police apprehended him at a different station in Manhattan hours later. An investigation is now being conducted, but the police currently believe that the victim and suspect did not know each other.

The attack occurred after New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced that 250 National Guard members would be deployed to New York City and that subways cars would be fitted with security cameras. Additionally, the killing was only one of two that occurred on subway stations on Sunday. A 26-year-old man had stabbed a person to death and injured another in a station at Queens.

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Violence on New York subways isn’t uncommon and some inhabitants have taken matters into their own hand. To wit, former marine Daniel Penny, who was found not guilty of criminally negligent homicide earlier this month, strangled Jordan Neely to death last year.

Neely was a homeless man with a history of mental illness who boarded a train in the May of January while being loud, angry and threatening, a claim not disputed by the prosecutors. However, the prosecutors alleged that Neely was choked for more than six minutes and thus claimed that Penny was unjustified in his use of force.

While Governor Hochul stated that crime is down 10 percent since May of this year, crime on subways continues to be a major concern for New York City’s inhabitants.

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