No one helped.
The bystanders were too busy filming. The cops? Well, instead of wrapping their jackets around a burning woman in an F train stopped at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue Station on Sunday morning, they walked by.
Then there was Sebastian Zapeta-Calil, the animal charged with lighting the match that set the innocent subway rider on fire — thus igniting a hellscape that feels like a metaphor for New York City’s decaying underground.
The footage itself is a dystopian horror show: a female figure standing like a zombie while her sadistic torturer sits on the platform and watches her body be eaten by flames.
Surely, someone would have thrown their coat over her, ran to look for water, screamed at her to stop, drop and roll. Found a fire extinguisher. Yelled for help. Something. Most of us like to think we would have acted to save her life.
But a woman is now dead.
The whole scene of this gruesome killing embodies multiple layers of our dysfunctional city — and the brokenness of our society, writ large.
Zapeta-Calil is an illegal migrant from Guatemala who burned a sleeping woman because, quite simply, he could. He fears no authority because there are few consequences for breaking the law here.
He sneaked into our country in 2018, was deported and came back at some point, reportedly staying in a shelter on the taxpayers’ dime. Remember when sensible New Yorkers said the migrant situation was untenable? Now it’s deadly.
But also, there’s a chilling apathy toward our fellow citizens — and a gross fascination with filming on our phones, not intervening.
Too many people captured the subway snuff film and posted their footage, with one guy commentating like he’s watching a mind-bending immersive art display.
“Sorry to his family, that’s a person right here,” the person filming says, while a chorus of “oh s–t” rings out from the crowd of onlookers.
While watching, I thought of Daniel Penny who, with every passing news cycle, reaches almost divine levels of vindication as our leaders look ever-more dangerously hapless.
Back in May of 2023, Penny didn’t hesitate to jump in and to protect his fellow New Yorkers from a subway maniac, who later died. The former Marine was rewarded by our Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg with criminal charges, a year and a half of hell, and a five-week trial. Thankfully, he was acquitted, but the hangover remains.
People are hesitant to step in and help each other — even if someone is literally on fire.
What the hell is going on here?
Meanwhile, as the footage went viral on Sunday afternoon, our incompetent governor Kathy Hochul shared on X images of her riding the subway and touting her successes fighting crime underground. The timing was farcically bad, but on brand for her.
Our society feels so disconnected. Everything and everyone is disposable.
(The lone heroes in this story were the high schoolers who recognized Zapeta-Calil later in the day, at the Jay Street-Metrotech station, and called police.)
Not too long ago, an atrocity like subway immolation would rule the news for weeks. We’d live in that tragedy and feel it sink into our bones. We felt like we knew the victims and their families as we learned all about dreams they once had.
Both politicians and citizens would be united in our outrage.
Now we read the stories, shake our heads, and quickly shift to some celebrity nonsense or an influencer shagging 200 men in a day. We’re happy to distract ourselves with a dopamine hit from whatever slop the social media algorithm feeds us.
But as a city, we need to look up from the phones that desensitize us.
When a psychotic homeless man with multiple arrests pushed Michelle Go in front of a train at the Times Square Station in 2022, killing her, we moved on far too quickly. Later that year, when Christina Yuna Lee, 35 was followed into her Chinatown apartment by madman Assamad Nash, who hacked her to death, we moved on too quickly.
We need to remember Daniel Enriquez who, as his sister said, “did die in vain” when a deranged gunman shot and killed the 48-year-old Goldman Sachs employee on the Q train as he was headed to brunch in 2022.
If we simply move on, we’ve made it easier for politicians and activists to gaslight us and say “Hey, it’s not so bad.” Or tell us it’s only a perception that crime feels bad, both below and above ground.
We know that’s not true. According to City Journal, this incident is the 11th subway murder this year — the worst of this century.
All of this is preventable.
However, the more we shrug off random violence, the more we allow it.
We need to demand action from our elected officials or vote in sensible pols willing to ensure our laws are enforced. Otherwise, this raging inferno of disorder will continue to burn.
