A high school senior who admitted to setting a sleeping homeless man on fire on a New York City subway last year has been sentenced to five and a half years in prison.
The 19-year-old defendant pleaded guilty in March to a charge of arson, and was given a prison term that is six months longer than the mandatory minimum, but shorter than the eight-year maximum federal prosecutors had asked for.
Prosecutors described the defendant's actions as "heinous," saying they left the homeless man extensively scarred and disfigured, and that he likely would have died if first responders hadn't immediately arrived to rush him to the hospital.
The attack occurred on December 1, 2025, when the defendant entered the uptown train at the 34th Street–Penn Station subway stop, setting the fire and then leaving the subway car. The train traveled for more than two minutes before reaching the next station, during which the fire spread across the subway bench and engulfed the victim, who was seen on surveillance footage standing up before collapsing.
Police officers with the New York Police Department arrived at the 42nd Street–Times Square station and found the homeless man on the platform with flames rising from his lap, per body camera footage. Prosecutors described the crime as "separated from murder by mere chance," and said that the defendant's admission that he had been drinking and smoking marijuana before the attack was not a sufficient mitigating factor.
The defendant's defense attorney pointed out that he was born with "neurodevelopmental impairment" after his mother did drugs while she was pregnant with him, and that he was abandoned at the hospital by his biological parents after he was born. The attorney also described his teen years as a whirlwind of heavy drug use and drinking, which escalated in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic prevented him from going to school in person.
The defendant himself called his crime "senseless" and "inexplicable," and expressed profound shame and remorse. The attack came roughly a year after the killing of a sleeping subway rider who was fatally set on fire aboard an F train in Brooklyn in December 2024.
The perpetrator of the previous attack remains in custody, awaiting trial. The recent sentence brings a measure of closure to the victims and their families, but the incident serves as a stark reminder of the dangers that can lurk in public spaces.
