The Guatemalan man accused of burning a woman alive in a New York subway car had his first appearance in court on Tuesday, where it was revealed that he admitted to the police that he had “drank a lot” and did not remember anything about the incident.
SZ, 33, faces charges of first- and second-degree murder, and one more charge of arson, after allegedly setting the woman on fire on the F train at a Brooklyn station.
Zapaeta set the sleeping victim on fire with a lighter and continued “fanning the flames with a shirt,” according to information cited by NBC about the statements made by the Prosecutor’s Office at the hearing.
The Guatemalan would have told the Police that he drank “a lot of liquor” and “he doesn’t know what happened,” the prosecutor said, according to the television station.
Witnesses said the man stared at the woman as the fire consumed her.
The victim who remains unidentified died from burns and smoke inhalation, the medical examiner determined.
It is believed that Zapaeta did not know the victim nor had he interacted with her.
The Guatemalan, who was undocumented in the United States, had been deported in 2018 and later returned to the country on an unknown date and was currently living in a shelter.
Zapaeta will remain detained without bail and must appear in court again next Friday.
The crime occurs at a time when undocumented immigration, especially from Latin America, is being used politically by the president-elect, Donald Trump, who has promised that one of the first measures when he takes office in January will be to carry out the largest deportation in history.
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