Sebastian Zapeta, accused of setting homeless woman on fire on Brooklyn subway train charged with first degree murder: DA
Sebastian Zapeta, 33, is facing life without parole if convicted for the disturbing caught-on-camera killing as his victim slept in an F train stopped at the end of the line at Coney Island-Stillwell Ave. station Sunday morning, cops said.
Sebastian Zapeta, the migrant accused of torching a homeless woman on a Brooklyn subway was indicted on first-degree murder charges Friday, officials said.
A grand jury voted for the upgraded charges, meaning that Zapeta, 33, is facing life without parole if convicted for the disturbing caught-on-camera killing as his victim slept in an F train stopped at the end of the line at Coney Island-Stillwell Ave. station at about 7:30 a.m. Sunday, according to cops.
“It’s the most serious statute in New York state law, and my office is very confident about the evidence in this case and our ability to hold Zapeta accountable,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez told reporters Friday after a brief proceeding in Brooklyn Criminal Court.
“This was a malicious deed, a sleeping vulnerable woman on our subway system. This was intentional, and we move to prove this in the court of law.”
Cops have yet to officially identify the victim, who remained a “Jane Doe” in court papers, Gonzalez said. Since the woman’s body was so badly burned “advanced fingerprinting efforts” were being deployed as well as searches for a DNA match. Detectives were also backtracking to learn where the woman entered the station and find the spots and shelters she may have frequented.
“Just because someone appears to have been living in this situation of homelessness does not mean that there’s not going to be family devastated by the tragic way she lost her life,” Gonzalez said.
Zapeta, a Guatemalan migrant who was living in a Brooklyn men’s shelter before his arrest, didn’t appear at a brief court appearance where the indictment charges were read.
He’s accused of setting the sleeping woman on fire with a lighter and then “fanning the fire using a shirt,” Brooklyn Assistant District Attorney Ari Rottenberg said at his arraignment on Tuesday, where he was ordered held without bail.
“The deceased became entirely engulfed in flames,” Rottenberg said. “The defendant then stepped out of the train onto a platform and continued fanning the flames with a shirt.”
Zapeta then threw the shirt to the ground and sat down on a bench on the subway platform to watch his deadly handiwork, prosecutors say.
Horrifying video shows the suspect sitting on the bench calmly watching as the flames engulfed the woman, who got to her feet and was standing helplessly near the subway car’s open door.
He left as first responders tried to put out the fire, but cops managed to get good images of him at the scene. They released images of the suspect to the media and within a few hours a trio of high schoolers spotted him on another train and called 911. Cops and transit officials held the train at 34th St. in Manhattan and arrested him.
Once he was in handcuffs, Zapeta told police he “drinks a lot of liquor” and “doesn’t know what happened,” prosecutors said.
He was arrested by Customs and Border Patrol in Arizona on June 2, 2018, sources said, then removed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials and returned to Guatemala. But he made his way back to the U.S. sometime after.
Despite calls to have federal prosecutors take over the case because of Zapeta’s migrant status, Gonzalez said he wants to keep the case in state court because the charges are “more significant in state court than currently in federal court.”
Gonzalez said Zapeta will be in court on Jan. 7 when he is arraigned on the murder 1 charge. He’s also facing three counts of murder in the second degree and first degree arson.
“Most of the time [first degree murder is] charged in the connection of killing of multiple people or the killing of a law enforcement officer,” Gonzalez said.
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