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Guatemalan immigrant who set woman on fire on NYC subway train shocked to see video of attack, ‘Oh damn, that’s me!’
“I don’t know what happened, but I’m very sorry for that woman,” 33-year-old suspect Sebastian Zapeta-Calil said.
An illegal Guatemalan immigrant who set a woman on fire on a Brooklyn subway train was so drunk that he was shocked when police showed him a video of the sickening attack he carried out. “Oh damn, that’s me!” 33-year-old Sebastian Zapeta-Calil told NYPD detectives on being shown footage of the December 22 attack, New York Post reported.
Zapeta-Calil set a sleeping woman, 57-year-old Debrina Kawam of New Jersey, on fire as she slept. He was later seen in a chilling video sitting calmly on a bench and watching the victim burn to death.
“No, the truth is I don’t remember,” he said. “Oh my goodness!”
‘I don’t know what happened’
Zapeta-Calil appeared disgusted at the images, and wiped his eyes and put his head down on the table, a transcript of the interview unsealed in Brooklyn Supreme Court on Tuesday, January 7, revealed. The stationhouse interview was conducted just shortly after he carried out the attack.
Zapeta-Calil has been arraigned on murder and arson charges. He admitted that he entered the country illegally, and would typically be drunk. “Sometimes when I drink and erase the memory, and I don’t know, right?” he told cops hours after the attack.
“When I wake up, I’m already in the house, already sleeping. I wake up when I’m already home, or there are times when I wake up and I’m already at the train station,” he added. “I was drunk. I drink in the afternoons.”
Describing the events that led up to the attack, Zapeta-Calil told cops he got off work that day and made a beeline for a Queens bar, drinking tequila and beer. He then picked up more beer and kept drinking and hopped on the F train in the morning after a night of boozing. He told Brooklyn detectives he worked as a roofer with “a Mexican.”
“Then, being about 8 or 9 in the morning, I stayed on 18th Avenue,” Zapeta-Calil said. “I really don’t remember how I got on this F train. When I reacted, I was already on it. When I woke up, I was already on the F train.”
Zapeta-Calil then got off at the Stillwell Avenue-Coney Island station and set Kawam ablaze as she slept. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges. “I am very sorry,” Zapeta-Calil, who is due back in court in March, reportedly told NYPD detectives. “I didn’t mean to. But I really don’t know. I don’t know what happened, but I’m very sorry for that woman.”
