NYPD Identifies Woman Burned To Death On Subway
The NYPD announced Tuesday that police have identified the person who was set on fire and burned to death in a subway train car last week.
The woman, Debrina Kawam, 61, had a Toms River, New Jersey address, police said.
She had a “brief stint in our homeless shelter system,” New York City Democratic Mayor Eric Adams said Tuesday.
The mayor added that authorities have been in contact with her next of kin.
“Hearts go out to the family, a horrific incident to have to live through,” Adams said of the killing. “It impacts on how New Yorkers feel. But it really reinforces what I’ve been saying: People should not be living on our subway system, they should be in a place of care. No matter where she lived that should not have happened.”
On Sunday last week, Kawam was sleeping on a Brooklyn F train when she was set on fire by an illegal migrant. Horrifying footage of her burning alive while standing inside the subway car spread across social media last week.
Kawam reportedly had a walker and several bags nearby as she slept on the train around 7:30 a.m. at the Stillwell Avenue-Coney Island station at the end of the line. She had reportedly been living in city homeless shelters since September. She had a bed at the Franklin Williams Women’s Shelter in the Bronx for a few days at the beginning of December.
The city medical examiner reportedly had difficulty identifying the victim because the body was so severely burned.
An illegal migrant from Guatemala, Sebastian Zapeta, 33, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and arson for allegedly setting her on fire. Video footage appears to show the culprit fanning the flames with his shirt, then sitting down to watch his victim burn alive.
Zapeta is being held at Rikers Island jail without bail.
He entered the country illegally in 2018 and was deported less than a week later, according to immigration authorities, but he eventually entered again and was living in a New York City shelter as of March 2023.
According to a fellow shelter resident, Zapeta was addicted to smoking the synthetic drug K2 and drank vodka heavily.
“He smoked K2, drank, and bugged out,” Raymond Robinson, who slept next to Zapeta at the Samaritan Village Forbell men’s shelter in Brooklyn, told the New York Post.
Police said Zapeta told them he had been drinking so much that he did not remember setting the woman on fire.
“This was a malicious deed. A sleeping, vulnerable woman on our subway system,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said when the indictment was announced against Zapeta.