A 19-year-old was sentenced to more than five years in prison Tuesday for setting fire to a homeless man sleeping on a subway car running through downtown.
Hiram Carrero was sentenced to 66 months in prison after being charged with the “heinous” attack that left his 56-year-old victim permanently disfigured in the early morning attack on December 1.
Carrero, of Harlem, was captured on surveillance footage boarding the 3 train at 34th Street-Penn Station just after 3 a.m. and setting fire to a piece of paper, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said. He said Tuesday.
The firebug used the burning paper to set his sleeping victim on fire before jumping off the train and returning to the Penn Station platform as the train headed north.
Carrero remained at the station for about 45 minutes after the attack before taking off, sources previously told The Washington Post.
The burning man, his legs engulfed in flames, rushed out of the car as the train entered the 42nd Street and Times Square station.
The unidentified victim was lying on the station platform near the tracks as flames engulfed his lap, according to disturbing footage shared by the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan.
First responders put out the fire, and part of the subway car was damaged by the fire.
Carrero’s victim was taken to NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in critical condition, having suffered major burns and leaving him with extensive permanent scarring and disfigurement.
Officials say he was saved because first responders reached him after a “short trip” from Penn Station to Times Square.
Prosecutors asked for an eight-year prison sentence and said Carrero tried to kill “a sleeping, homeless man by burning him alive and leaving him trapped in a moving subway car.”
The arsonist, who was a high school student at the time of the attack, was arrested and charged with attempted murder, assault, criminal mischief, arson and reckless endangerment.
In March, Carrero pleaded guilty to arson and admitted that he intentionally lit the piece of paper that harmed the man.
Carrero was also sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay restitution.
“Setting another person on fire is a horrific and unconscionable crime,” U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said Tuesday. “Thanks to the first responders, women and men of the NYPD and FDNY, a victim’s life was saved, and a terrible tragedy was averted. Safety in the subways is the top concern of our office, the NYPD, and our federal partners. Today’s ruling makes clear that anyone who terrorizes New Yorkers on the subway or anywhere else will face swift justice.”
Carrero’s attorney, Jennifer Brown, called for leniency for his client because his parents left him in the hospital after his birth when he was born prematurely and had drugs in his system.
Brown claimed “things fell apart for” Carrero during the pandemic in 2020, and he was feeling “deep shame and remorse” after the attack.
With mail wires