NYC homeless man sleeping inside Penn Station set on fire by 3 young men

Rocco Parascandola and Thomas Tracy, New York Daily News on Mar 3, 2026

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NEW YORK — A homeless man sleeping inside Penn Station in Midtown was set on fire by three young men, police said Tuesday.

The 37-year-old victim suffered second-degree burns to his arm and back that are not considered life threatening, cops said.

He was asleep near an entrance to Penn Station’s Amtrak rotunda on West 33rd Street near Eighth Avenue when the three men approached him about 8:40 p.m. Monday, cops said.

One of the men set fire to the slumbering victim’s clothes, causing a small blaze, police said.

First responders called to the scene quickly put out the fire and rushed the victim to New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell’s burn unit.

The three assailants ran further into the Amtrak station and have not been caught.

One suspect was wearing a black jacket and blue jeans. A second wore a brown jacket, gray pants and a gray hat while the third wore all black, was carrying a black backpack and had shoulder-length hair, cops said.

The incident comes as Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Homeless Services Department continues to come under scrutiny after at least 19 New Yorkers died on the streets in the recent cold snap, 15 of them from hypothermia — the majority of whom had some contact with the city’s Department of Homeless Services over the course of their lives, according to the city.

The mayor subsequently announced bringing back homeless encampments sweeps, in a reversal of his previous anti-sweep stance.