A homeless man sleeping inside Penn Station downtown was set on fire by three young men, police said Tuesday.
Police said the 37-year-old victim suffered non-life-threatening second-degree burns to his arms and back.
He was sleeping near the entrance to the Amtrak rotunda at Penn Station on West 33rd Street near Eighth Avenue when three men approached him around 8:40 Monday night, police said.
Police said one of the men set fire to the sleeping victim’s clothes, starting a small fire.
First responders who responded to the scene quickly extinguished the fire and transported the victim to the Weill Cornell Burn Unit at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.
The three attackers ran farther into the Amtrak station but were not captured.
One suspect was wearing a black jacket and blue jeans. The second man was wearing a brown jacket, gray pants and a gray hat, while the third man was wearing all black, carrying a black backpack and had shoulder-length hair, police said.
The incident comes as Mayor Mamdani’s homeless services department continues to come under scrutiny after at least 19 New Yorkers died on the streets during the recent cold snap, 15 of them from hypothermia, most of whom the city said had some contact with the city’s homeless services department in their lives.
The mayor later announced a resumption of sweeps of homeless encampments, reversing his previous anti-sweep stance.