The woman who was fatally set on fire in a New York City subway earlier this month has been identified as 57-year-old Debrina Kawam from Toms River, New Jersey, police said Tuesday.
Kawam was asleep on an idle F train at the Stillwell Avenue station, in Brooklyn, on Dec. 22, when just before 7:30 a.m. a man set her on fire and fled, according to the New York Police Department.
Police did not share any additional information about the victim. The initial release from the NYPD said she was 61, but the age was corrected in a later release. New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Kawam had “a brief stint” in the city’s homeless shelter system.
“Our hearts go out to the family,” Adams said during a news conference Tuesday. “A horrific incident to have to live through and just watching that tape, just really, I couldn’t even watch it all the way through. It was just a bad incident and it impacts on how New Yorkers feel.”
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez told reporters last week that his heart goes out to the victim and her family.
“Just because someone appears to have been living in the situation of homelessness does not mean that there’s not going to be family devastated by the tragic way she lost her life,” Gonzalez said.
A vigil was held for Kawam on Thursday at the Stillwell Avenue station.
Sebastian Zapeta-Calil, 33, a Guatemalan citizen, was arrested in connection with Kawam’s murder the same day, after he was caught on police body camera footage. Subway riders called 911 when they spotted him hours later and officers took him into custody.
He was indicted on four counts of murder and one count of arson on Friday, per prosecutors. A grand jury indictment was announced in court on one count of first-degree murder, three counts of second-degree murder and one count of first-degree arson, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office.
The first-degree murder charge carries the possibility of life without parole. Zapeta-Calil appeared in Brooklyn court Tuesday and was remanded back into custody.
The Guatemalan citizen is in the U.S. unlawfully and was previously deported, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.
