THE man accused of lighting a sleeping woman on fire on the subway and watching her burn to death gave a chilling glare after pleading not guilty to the horrific crime.
Sebastian Zapeta-Calil stared down reporters as he left the courthouse on Tuesday after being arraigned on four counts of murder and one count of arson.
Zapeta-Calil, 33, was ordered to be held without bail at his arraignment.
Cops say Zapeta-Calil set fire to a woman inside a subway train on the morning of December 22, using a lighter to ignite her clothes and a blanket she was wearing as she slept.
The attack left the woman so badly disfigured that it took days for officials to identify the woman as 57-year-old Debrina Kawam.
Kawam, a New Jersey resident who spent time in New York City’s homeless shelters, died of smoke inhalation and thermal injuries, the medical examiner’s office said.
Sickening footage appeared to show Zapeta-Calil fanning the woman’s flames before he sat on a bench on the subway platform in Brooklyn to watch the horrific scene.
Zapeta-Calil was arrested on a jam-packed subway car hours later after three high school students recognized the suspect from pictures released by the police.
After he was in handcuffs, Zapeta-Calil confirmed to cops that he was the man in surveillance footage and videos of the fire.
However, he said he couldn’t remember what happened because he had been drinking heavily.
“Sometimes when I drink and erase the memory, and I don’t know, right?” Zapeta-Calil told cops, according to a criminal complaint obtained by the New York Post.
“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.”
“I was drunk,” he reportedly said.
“I drink in the afternoons.”
Zapeta-Calil said he got off work as a roofer on Saturday night and went straight to a bar in Queens, where he drank beer and tequila well into the morning of the crime.
“I am very sorry,” he 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.”
He had a lighter in his pocket when he was arrested, cops said.
Zapeta-Calil was deported from the US after being arrested at the Mexican border in Arizona on June 1, 2018.
At some point after being kicked out of the country, Zapeta-Calil illegally re-entered the US.
He was living at a shelter for men struggling with substance abuse in the city at the time of the crime.
Zapeta-Calil was reportedly a heavy drinker who had a habit of smoking K2, an illegal synthetic cannabinoid, people at the shelter told the New York Post.
“He smoked K2, drank and bugged out,” Raymond Robinson, who slept next to Zapeta-Calil at the shelter, told the outlet.
My office is very confident about the evidence in the case and to hold Zapeta accountable for his dastardly deeds
Eric Gonzalez
“He would bug out and talk to himself when he was high, but he never harmed nobody or himself. When he wasn’t high he’d talk like we’re talking regular.”
Robinson said Zapeta-Calil smoked about $30 worth of K2 every day.
He said on the day of the crime, Zapeta-Calil woke up ate breakfast with his roommates like normal.
Zapeta-Calil could face life in prison without the possibility of parole if he’s found guilty on the first and second-degree murder charges against him as well as the arson charge.
“These are significant counts,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said after the suspect’s indictment.
“Murder in the first degree carries the possibility of life without parole.
“It’s the most serious statute in New York state law and my office is very confident about the evidence in the case and to hold Zapeta accountable for his dastardly deeds.”
Zapeta-Calil is set to appear in court again on March 12.
