New York Metropolis Police introduced Sunday they’ve in custody a “individual of curiosity” within the early morning demise of a lady who they imagine might have fallen asleep on a stationary subway prepare earlier than being deliberately lit on hearth by a person she didn’t know.
Transit police apprehended the suspect after receiving a report from three highschool college students who had acknowledged the person. That they had seen photographs of the suspect taken from surveillance and police physique cam video and broadly distributed by police. “New Yorkers got here by once more,” stated New York Metropolis Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who described the case as “some of the wicked crimes one individual may presumably commit in opposition to one other human being.”
Tisch stated the suspect and the lady, each of whom haven’t been recognized, had been using a subway prepare to the top of the road in Brooklyn at round 7:30 a.m.
After the prepare got here to a cease, surveillance video from the subway automotive confirmed the person “calmly” stroll as much as the sufferer, who was seated and presumably sleeping, and set her clothes on hearth with what seemed to be a lighter. The girl’s clothes then “grew to become absolutely engulfed in a matter of seconds,” Tisch stated. Police don’t imagine the 2 knew each other.
Officers on a routine patrol on the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue subway station smelled smoke and found the lady on hearth, standing in the course of the subway automotive. After the hearth was extinguished, emergency medical personnel declared the lady lifeless on the scene.
Unbeknownst to the officers, the suspect had remained on the scene and was seated on a bench on the subway platform, simply exterior the prepare automotive, Tisch stated. Physique cameras worn by the officers caught a “very clear, detailed look” on the suspect and people photographs had been publicly disseminated.
After later receiving a 911 name from the youngsters, different transit officers recognized the person on one other subway prepare and radioed forward to the subsequent station, the place extra officers searched every automotive and finally apprehended him with out incident. The person had a lighter in his pocket, Tisch stated. The case marked the second fatality on a New York subway Sunday.
At 12:35 a.m., police responded to an emergency name for an assault in progress on the 61st Road-Woodside Station in Queens and located a 37-year-old man with a stab wound to his torso and a 26-year-old man with a number of slashes all through his physique. The older man was pronounced lifeless at a close-by hospital whereas the youthful man was in steady situation, police stated.
An investigation was persevering with. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul this yr has despatched New York Nationwide Guard members to the town’s subway system to assist police conduct random searches of riders’ luggage for weapons following a sequence of high-profile crimes on metropolis trains. Hochul not too long ago deployed extra members to assist patrol throughout the vacation season.
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