By Jonathan Allen
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A man accused of killing a woman who was sleeping in a New York subway car by setting her on fire pleaded not guilty to murder and arson charges at a court hearing on Tuesday.
A grand jury indicted Sebastian Zapeta, 33, on one count of first-degree murder, three counts of second-degree murder and one count of first-degree arson in the killing of Debrina Kawam, 57.
Crime remains relatively rare in the city’s subway system, one of the oldest and largest transit systems in the world, but the New York Police Department acknowledged this week that attacks like Kawama’s violent killing can frighten New Yorkers.
Many were horrified by a short video of Kawam on fire next to an open carriage door, taken by a horrified passerby on the platform.
According to the police report, Zapeta used a lighter to set fire to the clothes of Kawam, who appeared to be sleeping in a seat in an F train car at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue subway station around 7:30 a.m. on Dec. 22. .
He then used his shirt to start the fire, according to the police complaint.
Kawam was pronounced dead at the scene after the fire was extinguished. The city medical examiner said the cause of death was smoke inhalation and thermal injuries. It took more than a week to identify him using fingerprint analysis.
A Guatemalan citizen, federal officials said, who was living at a homeless shelter in Brooklyn, was arrested, according to the NYPD.
He was arraigned in Kings Supreme Court in Brooklyn in a brief hearing before Judge Danny Chun on Tuesday morning, appearing in orange prison garb with his hands cuffed behind his back and a Spanish translator at his side.
Kawam was from Toms River, a coastal town in New Jersey, and, like Zapeta, also spent time in the city’s homeless shelter system, according to Mayor Eric Adams.
About 4 million trips each weekday are made on the city’s subway system, where serious crime, mainly theft, fell for the second year in a row in 2024, down 5.4% from the previous year, the NYPD said.
The murders, however, increased. Through November, nine subway homicides had been reported in 2024, compared with five in the same period in 2023, according to police data.
New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Monday she was sending more officers to patrol the system in response to Kawamo’s killing and other “horrifying random acts of violence.”
“The reduction in crime is significant, but we still need to do more because people don’t feel safe in our subways,” Tisch said.
If convicted on any of the charges, Zapeta faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. The US Department of Homeland Security said Zapeta entered the country illegally and would eventually seek deportation.
