Suspect in NYC Subway Fire Is Charged With Murder in Woman’s Death

The man charged with murder in the woman’s death was identified by federal officials as a 33-year-old from Guatemala who was in the United States illegally.

The videos rocketed across social media. A woman stands motionless in the doorway of a subway car as flames engulf her body. A police officer strolls by, as people scream out of frame.

Then a man rises from a subway bench, holding a coat or blanket. He approaches the woman, but instead of trying to smother the flames, he waves the garment at her, appearing to fan them.

On Monday, Sebastian Zapeta-Calil, 33, who appeared to be the man in the videos, was charged with first-degree murder and arson in the apparently random atrocity inside a parked F train in Coney Island early Sunday morning.

Federal immigration officials said he was an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala who had been deported in 2018, only to illegally return to the United States. The address he gave the police after his arrest was a homeless shelter in Brooklyn for men with drug problems.

The woman, who has not yet been identified, also appeared to be homeless and was sleeping on the train, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an investigation. She did not appear to know her killer. When he boarded the train in Queens, she was already on it, and they rode the same train for the long journey to its terminus in Coney Island, the official said.

The nightmarish attack seemed almost like a collage of social problems the city is facing: homelessness, random transit crime, illegal immigration, substance abuse.

It unfolded on a train where homeless people often take refuge in cold weather — the temperature plunged to 16 degrees Saturday night — riding a three-hour loop back and forth from Queens to Brooklyn.

As elected officials denounced the crime as depraved and unspeakable, Eric Gonzalez, the Brooklyn district attorney, noted the defenselessness of the victim. “This gruesome and senseless act of violence against a vulnerable woman will be met with the most serious consequences,” he said.

Federal Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officials said that once Mr. Zapeta-Calil was charged, its Enforcement and Removal Operations wing would lodge an immigration detainer with the New York authorities. A detainer is a notice that immigration authorities intend to take someone into custody if he is released from the local criminal justice system.

Republicans wasted little time linking the murder to Democrats’ immigration policies.

“Here’s another example of an illegal alien killing an American citizen,” Tom Homan, President-elect Trump’s border czar, said on “Fox & Friends” on Monday. “It’s almost a daily occurrence now, because a historic number of criminal aliens are walking the streets, because of this administration’s policy in sanctuary jurisdictions and lax immigration enforcement.”

Mayor Eric Adams, who has echoed some of Mr. Trump’s tough-on-illegal-immigration rhetoric of late, declaring that migrants accused of crimes did not deserve due process, said on Monday that immigrants who impede other people’s pursuit of the “American dream” were not welcome.

“We need to immediately remove them from our country after they serve their time,” he told Fox News.

The attack was the latest in a string of crimes that have fed a persistent sense among some New Yorkers that the subways are unsafe.

Earlier on Sunday, one person was killed and another injured in a stabbing on a 7 train in Queens. Last month, commuters had to shelter on subway car floors as the police searched for a gunman who had shot someone and fled into the subway. In February, an overnight slashing attack injured a conductor on an A train.

Waiting for a C train at the West 23rd Street station in Manhattan on Monday, Joel Weiner, 75, who leads guided tours of the city, said he cautioned visitors to keep their guard up in the subway. “I say to them, ‘I’m not proud of the subway system here. But it is what it is. Don’t engage with anyone, don’t look eye to eye.’ That’s just what we have to do.”

According to the police, though, crime overall has been falling in the subway. Through October, the most recent month for which figures were available, there were 6 percent fewer major crimes in the transit system this year than last year, the police said.

On Sunday, Mr. Zapeta-Calil said nothing to the woman, the police said. He just walked up to her, pulled a lighter from his pocket and lit her afire.

In a video published by The New York Post, a man who appears to be Mr. Zapeta-Calil is seen sitting on a bench on the subway platform, watching flames consume the woman as a passerby is heard yelling, “This is a person right here!” and “Oh, no!”

Police and transit workers eventually doused the woman with a fire extinguisher, but she was declared dead at the scene.

The Post’s video also shows a uniformed police officer walking right by the burning woman. Joseph Gulotta, the chief of transit for the Police Department, was asked at a news conference why the officer did not try to help her.

He said the officer was securing the crime scene. “I commend that one officer who stayed there, made sure he kept the crime scene the way it’s supposed to be, made sure he kept an eye on what was going on,” he said. “So I think he did his job perfectly. As his fellow officers went and got M.T.A. workers, got fire extinguishers, and eventually were able to extinguish the individual.”

Immediately after the killing, the police circulated images of the suspect, and three teenagers reported seeing a man they believed to be him on another train in Brooklyn. Officers boarded that train in Manhattan and found the suspect wearing the same clothes he wore at the time of the attack.

In his pocket, the police said, was a lighter.

Jeffery C. Mays contributed reporting.