After the tragic incident on December 22, when a woman was set on fire while she was sleeping on an F train in Brooklyn, another homeless man was reportedly set ablaze inside Penn Station on Friday, Dec. 28. He is hospitalized with burns on his legs and upper body.
Officials are still investigating. Policemen and firemen intervened at 8 PM and found a 67-year-old man nearly covered in flames on the 1, 2, and 3-line platform. He was immediately taken to New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in critical condition. When he regained consciousness, he claimed that someone set him on fire, but NYPD stated there is no evidence yet that there was any criminal involvement, and it remains unclear how the incident occurred. He may have set himself on fire according to The New York Post.
The incident comes only a few days after a woman was fatally set on fire by an illegal immigrant who came to the U.S. from Guatemala in 2018. The suspect, 33-year-old Sebastian Zapeta-Calil, acted calmly as he threw a lit match on the homeless woman on the F train at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station.
Facing a surge of unanticipated violence, the Guardian Angels have just announced that they are resuming patrols in the New York subway.
