Maniac sets straphanger on fire inside NYC subway before being arrested after fleeing train: cops
A maniac ignited a cup of liquid and hurled it at a stranger on a Manhattan subway Saturday, setting fire to the man’s shirt and burning his chest and neck, cops said.
The terrifying episode is the second time in four months someone tossed flaming liquid at a straphanger — and authorities are investigating whether the same fire bug is to blame in both incidents.
The latest incident unfolded as the No. 1 train was pulling into the Houston Street station at West Houston and Varick Streets around 2:45 p.m..
When the train doors opened, the attacker, identified as Nile Taylor ran — but stopped to scoop up a phone a woman on the platform had dropped.
Quick-thinking police officers talked to her and then tracked the lost phone.
Taylor was taken into custody a short time later about five blocks away at Canal Street and Renwick Street, near the entrance to the Holland Tunnel.
The burned man, 23, was treated at New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Hospital but was not seriously injured.
Investigators are probing if Taylor, 49, was also responsible for a similar attack in February, a police source said.
In that incident, a crazed man tossed a flaming container at a group of straphangers on a subway platform on the No. 1 line on Feb. 5, around 7:40 p.m. inside the West 28th Street station.
“They think he might be the guy from the February incident,” a police source said, of the prior flame-throwing incident.
Cops released footage at the time showing a man holding two blazing cans at a turnstile.
Taylor’s rap sheet includes a 1997 arrest for weapons possession when he was found with a .22 caliber rifle, a Ruger, and a silver Derringer, according to a source.
The fiery afternoon on the rails is another example of how much the city’s justice system has deteriorated, said Joseph Giacalone, a retired NYPD Sergeant and professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
“What’s next?” he wondered. “I’ve been to this movie so many times, where, if we think the criminal justice system has become a revolving door, the emotionally disturbed, mental health procedures have become a double or triple revolving door.
“Unfortunately someone is going to get badly hurt.”
