Sebastian Zapeta, the man who was arrested for torching a sleeping woman on a Brooklyn subway train, was found to be an illegal migrant who was once deported but he sneaked back into the US. The man was charged with murder and arson charges after he was picked up about eight hours after the bone-chilling murder he did. “Wow,” Elon Musk wrote reacting to the revelation that the illegal migrant was once deported but he found a way back to the US.
Zapeta was nabbed at the border in Arizona on June 1, 2018, records revealed. He was deported a week later but he re-entered the country illegally at some point, Marie Ferguson, a spokesperson for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.
What is known about Sebastian Zapeta?
Sebastian Zapeta is 33 years old and does not appear to have any other previous criminal history.
It’s not known when he crossed the border again after being deported in 2018.
The investigators are yet to find out how long he was in the city before the F train attack.
In April 2013, he was staying at a Days Inn hotel on 36th street which had been converted into a migrant shelter.
Records revealed that he was issued a transit ticket in 2023. At that time, he gave an address of a shelter on Radall’s Island.
He was calmly watching the sleeping woman whom he later set on fire allegedly, leading to her death.
The madman ignited the victim’s clothing with a lighter and the woman was fully engulfed by fire in a matter of seconds. Patrolling cops reached the site at once, and extinguished the blaze but the victim died at the scene.
Zapeta was arrested after three high schoolers tipped off the police saying that they saw the man pictured in images released by the NYPD at the Jay and York Street station on the F line. When the police responded to that call, they found Zapeta on another train leaving the station. But he was wearing the same gray hoodie, wool hat and paint-splattered pants.
