Two people were detained, including a parolee with 131 prior offenses, for setting fire to a homeless man sleeping at Penn Station, police said Wednesday.
Damon Johnson, 47, was arrested by Amtrak Police Department officers on Tuesday and charged with attempted murder and assault in connection with the Monday incident that left a 37-year-old man with second-degree burns on his arm and back, according to authorities. He pled not guilty at his appearance in Manhattan Criminal Court the next day and was ordered jailed without bail.
Just hours before Johnson’s arraignment on Wednesday, Amtrak police apprehended Lyla Najjar, 33, who is charged with assault for the attack, according to authorities.
The victim was dozing at the W. 33rd St. entrance to Penn Station’s Amtrak rotunda near Eighth Ave. when he was approached by three people, one of whom lit fire to his clothes around 8:30 p.m., according to police.
During Johnson’s arraignment, Callum Mullan, a prosecutor with the Manhattan district attorney’s office, revealed camera footage of the incident, which showed Johnson kneeling over the victim, who then “began wailing and convulsing and scrambled to his feet with his jacket on fire.”
A video shared online shows the man on his feet, flames spreading across his arm, attempting to fend off his attackers as they hurl him to the ground. The footage shows the sufferer fighting to remove his flaming sweater.
First responders swiftly extinguished the fire and sent the victim to New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell’s burn center.
Following the incident, the three men escaped to the station.
Johnson is currently on parole for a 2018 robbery in which he slashed a student’s face before stealing money from his pockets, according to Mullan, who stated that the victim required over 100 stitches.
Johnson’s criminal record began in 1995 with an assault charge in the Bronx and includes 131 prior charges, according to police.
Prior to Tuesday, Johnson had been handcuffed for an attack on September 9, 2024, in which he hit and slapped a 56-year-old lady in the face following an argument on E. Tremont Ave. and Grand Concourse in the Bronx’s Morris Heights neighborhood.
Johnson faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years to life for the attempted murder at Penn Station because he is a persistent violent felon, according to Mullan.
Najjar has five past arrests, the most recent being for contempt of court on February 28, according to police.
Leave a Reply