A sleeping subway rider burned to death on an F train in Coney Island Sunday morning after a madman threw a lit match onto her causing her to burst into flames police sources said.
NYPD officers responded to reports of a fire just before 7:30 a.m. at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue subway station and found the woman engulfed in fire while sitting on an idling F train, police told The Post.
She was found with liquor bottles surrounding her, though it was not immediately clear if they played any part in the fire, sources said.
Investigators believe that the woman was sleeping when a man sitting across from her got up, walked by her and threw a match on her, engulfing her in fire, sources said.
The man, believed to be in his 20s, then fled the station, the sources added.
Police extinguished the fire and EMS declared the woman dead at the scene, police said.
Service on the F train remained suspended into Sunday afternoon as police investigators continued combing through the crime scene.
Shocked commuters watched in horror as the woman’s body was carted out of the station in a black body bag just after 1 p.m.
“It’s incredible,” the stunned commuter said as the gurney was wheeled out of the station.
An MTA worker told The Post it looked like the woman’s clothes were “burnt off” completely.
“I was just walking by. The cops was there already. I didn’t see her in flames but that’s what I heard. It was out. They shut the lights off [in the car] so nobody could see,” the worker said.
Police were already processing the scene and the woman’s body had been extinguished when the man saw the grim site, which clearly jolted him.
“That s–t is crazy — it’s only three days until Christmas,” he added. That’s messed up.”
Commuters continuously paused in their tracks while transferring trains to take in the horrific scene.
“It’s scary,” Brooklyn construction manager Alex Gureyev, 39 said. “It’s going down hill a bit. Everybody keeps saying it’s going back to the seventies. It’s a frequent occurrence — not like this, setting people on fire — but like the mugging, the killings, the fighting, the shootings, they’re really common nowadays. [It’s] very bad.”
Sunday morning’s horrifying attack comes as Gov. Kathy Hochul deployed an additional 250 National Guard troops in New York City’s subways for the holiday season and beyond — swelling the New York Army National Guard’s $100 million subway deployment to 1,000 troops. Some eight million visitors were expected to travel to the Big Apple over the holidays.
Hochul insisted her controversial first deployment of National Guard troops into the subways in March has led to a dramatic drop in transit crime, noting subway crime has dipped 10%.
Despite the governor’s efforts, murders on New York City subways were up at least 60% this year, according to data collected in September.
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Eight people were killed on subway cars or in stations as of Sept. 8 — up from just five from the same period last year, according to NYPD data.
The F train terror was only the latest attack in a bloody 24 hours on the New York City’s transit system.
— An argument between five men on a southbound 7 train at Woodside Avenue and 61st Street in Queens turned deadly just after midnight Sunday.
During the fight, a 69-year-old man stabbed one person in the chest and another in the face, police said.
The man stabbed in the chest died at the hospital, police said. The suspect was in custody awaiting charges.
— Several hours later at 4:30 a.m., a northbound D train was put out of service after a passenger became irate and threw a can at a conductor. The conductor, a 38-year-old man, was taken to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital and was in stable condition, police said.
The suspect was not arrested in the attack, police added.
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