A homeless man is recovering from burns on his legs and upper body, alleging he was set on fire by an unknown perpetrator while he slept in New York City’s Penn Station, police and law enforcement sources said.
First responders arrived at the major train station around 7:50 p.m. Friday after police received a call saying that a person was on fire in a commuter passageway, the New York Post reported.
The victim, determined by authorities to be a 67-year-old homeless man, had “burns to both legs and his upper body” but was transported to the hospital in “stable condition,” according to the outlet.
Law enforcement sources told the Post that the man said he believes that somebody set him on fire while he was asleep, but police are still unsure if criminality was a factor in the blaze.
There are no surveillance cameras in the area where the victim was found, though an investigation is taking place around New Jersey Transit tracks 1-12.
“This is exactly the way I come to the office every day,” one commuter told the Post, noting that it is common to see homeless individuals sleeping in the poorly-lit passageways in Penn Station.
The incident occurred just days after a woman sleeping on the subway in Brooklyn died after being lit ablaze by an illegal Guatemalan migrant, Breitbart News reported.
Journalist Nick Sortor decried the latest New York transit fire attack in an X post:
“ANOTHER person set on fire at a train station in just a week in NYC?? This MUST end,” he wrote. “Penn Station is known to be one of the MAJOR hubs for importing illegal migrants into NYC, and is one of the busiest train stations in the region.”