Tragic twist in sickening murder of woman set on fire by illegal migrant on NYC subway

The woman who was burned alive on a New York City subway train last week has yet to be identified, most likely because of how badly charred her remains were, a law enforcement official said.

NYPD confirmed that detectives have yet to determine the identity of the victim, and a separate source told DailyMail.com that this is likely due to the poor condition of her remains.

“She was burned, she was burned to death,” the official said in explaining the ID delay. EIt was understood the woman, who is believed to be homeless, had no identification on her at the time of the attack.

It’s the latest gruesome twist in the sickening murder allegedly by Guatemalan migrant Sebastian Zapeta-Calil, 33, who appeared in Brooklyn Supreme Court on Tuesday charged with murder and arson. He has not yet entered a plea.

Zapeta-Calil is accused of setting the unnamed passenger on fire as she slept on the F train at Stillwell Avenue in Coney Island just before 7:30 a.m. Sunday.

Disturbing videos show the suspect watching from the safety of the platform as the woman was engulfed by the fire, at one point even stopping to fan the flames.

Meanwhile, New Yorkers filmed the carnage on their phones and NYPD officers appeared to walk by without intervening.

NYPD Police Chief Jessica Tisch told a news conference that responding officers were unaware the suspect was on the scene at the time.

Sebastian Zapeta-Calil sits on a bench in the subway and watches the woman he set on fire burn alive. In front of him stands an NYPD officer who walked past him, not knowing he would be responsible for the sickening crime

Zapeta-Calil appeared stone-faced Tuesday as he appeared before the Brooklyn Supreme Court. Officers said he told them he was drunk at the time of the gruesome murder on the subway and that he doesn’t remember it.

His friends at the homeless shelter where he lived said he was a heavy drinker who chain-smoked a synthetic drug known as K2.

They added that on the day of the murder, Zapeta-Calil shared a breakfast of French toast, sausage and grits at the facility with one of his roommates before things took a gruesome turn.

“He said, ‘I’m going out to do my normal run,’ and the next thing I hear what he’s done on the news,” Raymond Robinson, who slept next to Zapeta-Calil in the shelter, told the New York Post.

“He was smoking K2, drinking and eavesdropping,” Robinson said. “He talked to himself when he was high, but he never hurt anyone or himself. When he wasn’t high, he would talk like we were talking normally.”

After the alleged murder, Zapeta-Calil eventually boarded the F train again, and he was flagged down by high school students at York Street Station in downtown Brooklyn, who recognized him from police photos distributed Sunday.

NYPD officers alerted MTA, which stopped the train eight stops north of the sighting at Herald Square in Midtown Manhattan. Police boarded the subway and arrested Zapeta-Calil as he sat in a crowded carriage, as captured in dramatic videos shared online.

Police Commissioner Tisch praised the police response to the horrific incident during a press conference on Sunday evening as “an example of great technology and even greater old-fashioned police work.”

Pictured: Sebastian Zapeta is arraigned in Brooklyn Supreme Court after being arrested for setting a woman on fire on the F train in Brooklyn on Sunday morning

Train surveillance cameras caught the man setting the woman on fire and then watching as she suffered in agony

She added that detectives do not believe Zapeta-Calil and the victim knew each other, as she provided more details about the “depraved crime.”

“The suspect walked calmly towards the victim, who was sitting at the end of a subway train,” she said. “The suspect used what we believe was a lighter to ignite the victim’s clothing, which was completely engulfed within seconds.

“Officers patrolling an upper floor of that station smelled and saw smoke and went to investigate. What they saw was a person standing in a train car, completely engulfed in flames.

“With the assistance of an MTA employee and a fire extinguisher, the flames were extinguished. Unfortunately, it was too late and the victim was pronounced (dead) on the spot.

“Unbeknownst to the responding officers, the suspect had remained at the scene and was sitting on a bench on a platform just outside the train car.

“The responding officers’ body-worn cameras provided a very clear, detailed image of the killer.”

Zapeta-Calil was wearing the same “gray hoodie, distinctive wool hat, paint-splattered pants and tan boots” when officers tracked him down, and he also had a lighter in his pocket, the NYPD said.

Fox News described him as a Guatemalan migrant. This has not been confirmed by the police.