The migrant accused of torching a homeless lady on a Brooklyn subway made his first courtroom look Tuesday to face homicide costs â and prosecutors revealed he used his shirt to fan the flames after he ignited her garments with a lighter.
Sebastian Zapeta, a 33-year-old Guatemalan migrant dwelling in a Brooklyn males’s shelter, was wearing a white Tyvek go well with with a black hoodie poking out from beneath as he stood in Brooklyn Prison Courtroom Tuesday.
Choose Jung Park ordered him held with out bail on costs of first- and second-degree homicide and arson.
After his arrest, Zapeta advised police he “âdrinks a lot of liquorâ and âdoesnât know what happened,” Assistant District Lawyer Ari Rottenberg mentioned Tuesday.
Zapeta approached the sufferer â who authorities nonetheless haven’t been capable of establish â as she slept in an F prepare stopped on the finish of the road at Coney Island-Stillwell Ave. station at about 7:30 a.m. Sunday, in accordance with cops.
He and the girl seemed to be strangers and he mentioned nothing to her as he set her clothes ablaze with a lighter, cops mentioned.
“(He) began fanning the fire using a shirt. The deceased became entirely engulfed in flames. The defendant then stepped out of the train onto a platform and continued fanning the flames with a shirt,” Rottenberg mentioned in courtroom.
Zapeta then threw the shirt to the bottom and sat down on a bench on the subway platform to observe his lethal handiwork, prosecutors say.
Suspect arrested for lighting lady on hearth on Brooklyn prepare.Horrifying video exhibits the suspect sitting on the bench calmly watching because the flames engulfed the girl, who received to her ft and was standing helplessly close to the subway automobile’s open door.
Police on the scene didn’t notice Zapeta’s position within the blaze and he walked away unnoticed, police mentioned.
Surveillance video later recovered by cops confirmed him contained in the subway automobile and a police officer’s physique cam received a transparent shot of his face as he sat on the bench, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch mentioned Sunday. Police launched photographs of him to the media and a trio of excessive schoolers noticed him on one other prepare later within the day and known as 911, the commissioner mentioned.
Cops and transit officers held the prepare at thirty fourth St. in Manhattan and arrested him.
Zapeta was arrested by Customs and Border Patrol in Arizona on June 2, 2018, sources mentioned, then eliminated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and returned to Guatemala. However he made his means again to the U.S. someday after.
Theodore Parisienne / New York Each day Information
Sebastian Zapeta, charged with burning a girl to dying on a subway prepare, leaving the NYPD sixtieth Precinct stationhouse in Brooklyn Monday. (Theodore Parisienne / New York Each day Information)
Zapeta is due again in Brooklyn Prison Courtroom on the homicide costs Friday. This was his first arrest in New York Metropolis.
His lawyer, Andrew Friedman, reserved the proper to use for bail at a later date. Friedman declined remark Tuesday.
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