Critics Say Bystanders Stood by While Illegal Migrant Burned Woman to Death on NYC Subway
New Yorkers were up in arms Monday one day after an illegal Guatemalan immigrant allegedly burned a sleeping straphanger to death aboard a Brooklyn subway train — while bystanders did nothing.
Horrifying video footage of the incident shows at least three gawkers — one of them seen filming the shocking fatal blaze on his phone — and an NYPD cop standing outside the subway car as flames engulfed the unidentified victim after the Sunday morning attack.
“Nobody came to her aid,” said Guardian Angels founder and community activist Curtis Sliwa. “There’s no doubt that people don’t want to get involved. It’s the Daniel Penny factor. It’s frozen people. They’re saying to themselves: ‘I don’t want to get jammed up like Penny.
“People should have been running over to the woman on fire. They did nothing. They said nothing,” Sliwa said, calling the reluctance of bystanders to intervene “the Daniel Penny effect.”
Penny, a 26-year-old ex-Marine, was charged with murder last year for fatally choking vagrant Jordan Neely after Neely aggressively confronted frightened passengers on a Manhattan subway car. (Read more from “Critics Say Bystanders Stood by While Illegal Migrant Burned Woman to Death on NYC Subway” HERE)
