The woman who was heinously burned alive in a New York City subway car last week has been identified as a 57-year-old woman from New Jersey, according to police.
via: NYP
Debrina Kawam of Toms River was sleeping on the train at the Stillwell Avenue-Coney Island station 7:30 a.m. on Dec. 22 when she was set on fire — with illegal Guatemalan immigrant Sebastian Zapeta-Calil now facing first-degree murder charges in the sick attack.
Horrifying video footage shows the accused killer fanning the flames as Kawam was consumed by the flames — and calmly watching the scorched victim from a bench on the platform.
The Coalition for the Homeless described her as homeless.
Kawam was identified through fingerprints, sources said.
The sources said Kawam had been living in Big Apple shelters since at least Sept. 9, and had been given a bed at the Franklin Williams Women’s Shelter in the Bronx on Nov. 30, but left on Dec. 2.
She had at least three prior scrapes with the police — a transit bust for alcohol on April 28, a 2010 disorderly conduct charge in Maryland in 2010, and a New Jersey prostitution bust in 1994, according to law enforcement sources.
“She resided in New Jersey and had a brief stint in our shelter system,” Mayor Eric Adams said Tuesday. “Our hearts go out to the family for this horrific incident.
“It was just a bad incident and impacts how New Yorkers feel,” the mayor said. “But it really reinforces what I’ve been saying, people should not be living on our subway system. They should be in a place of care.
“No matter where she lived this shouldn’t have happened.”
A source also told The Post she was alive when she was set on fire, with a walker and several bags nearby.
The city medical examiner struggled to identify the body because it was so severely burned in the attack, sources previously said.
Zapeta-Calil, who was arraigned on first- and second-degree murder and arson charges, is being held at Rikers Island without bail.
Federal immigration officials said he entered the US illegally in 2018 but was deported less than a week later — only to find his way back into the country and to the Big Apple.
By March 2023, he was living in the New York City shelter system.
A pal at the Brooklyn facility where he last shacked up told The Post the migrant was addicted to smoking the synthetic drug K2 and drank heavily on a daily basis.
The accused killer allegedly told cops he was so high, he didn’t remember lighting the fire.
“He smoked K2, drank and bugged out,” said shelter resident Raymond Robinson, who slept on a cot at the facility next to Zapeta-Calil until his arrest.
“He would bug out and talk to himself when he was high, but never harmed nobody but himself,” Robinson said. “That’s why this s–t f–ked my head up because I slept next to him and he was never like that. I wouldn’t leave my daughter with anybody but he was the type of dude I could trust.
“As long as he wasn’t high,” he added.
Robinson said Zapeta-Calil liked to drink Voda vodka, “the cheapest s–t there is.”
Additional reporting by Craig McCarthy
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