Killing of Debrina Kawam
fatal immolation in Brooklyn, New York
On the morning of December 22, 2024, Debrina Kawam (born Debbie Kawam), was immolated by a man while she was sleeping on the New York City Subway while an F train was stopped at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station in Brooklyn. Sebastian Zapeta-Calil, was subsequently arrested in connection to the killing.
The immolation was determined to have been a random attack. The incident has led to heightened concerns relating to safety of those using transportation in New York City.
Incident
At approximately 7:30 a.m. EST on December 22, 2024, on a stationary F train at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station, a man approached the only other passenger on the train car, a woman who was sleeping, using a lighter to set fire to her clothing. The victim became engulfed in flames in a matter of seconds.
After carrying out the attack, the perpetrator got off the train car but remained at the scene sitting on a bench. A video taken by a bystander shows a man, later identified as Zapeta-Calil, sitting on a nearby bench watching the fire before standing up and appearing to fan the flames using a T-shirt.
Body cameras worn by two officers responding to the scene captured him on a bench opposite the car.
The public source identifies “Killing of Debrina Kawam” as fatal immolation in Brooklyn, New York. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Killing, Debrina and Kawam.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q131548612. Authority coordinates are 40.577, -73.981. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2024.
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This entry incorporates text from “Killing of Debrina Kawam” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.