Two people were arrested, including a parolee with a criminal record that includes 131 prior arrests, for setting a homeless man on fire as he slept at Penn Station, police said Wednesday.
Damon Johnson, 47, was arrested Tuesday by officers with the Amtrak Police Department and charged with attempted murder and assault for the attack on Monday that left a 37-year-old man with second-degree burns on his arm and back, according to law enforcement. He pleaded not guilty at his arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court the following day, where he was ordered held without bail.
Just hours before Johnson’s arraignment on Wednesday, Amtrak police nabbed 33-year-old Lyla Najjar, who is charged with assault for the attack, said police.
The victim was dozing near a W. 33rd St. entrance to Penn Station’s Amtrak rotunda near Eighth Ave. when he was approached by three people, one of whom set fire to the man’s clothes around 8:30 p.m., cops said.
During Johnson’s arraignment, Callum Mullan, a prosecutor with the Manhattan district attorney’s office, described video of the attack that shows Johnson leaning over the victim, who moments later “begins wailing and convulsing and scrambled to his feet with his jacket on fire.”
Video posted online shows the victim on his feet, with flames spreading across his arm, trying to fend off his attackers as they throw him to the ground. The victim can be seen struggling to remove his burning sweatshirt, the video shows.
First responders quickly put out the flames and rushed the victim to New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell’s burn unit.
After the attack, the three men fled into the station.
Johnson is currently on parole for a 2018 robbery, in which he slashed a student’s face before taking cash from his pockets, according to Mullan, who said the victim required more than 100 stitches.
Beginning in 1995 with an assault charge in the Bronx, Johnson’s criminal record includes 131 prior arrests, cops said.
Before Tuesday, Johnson was most recently cuffed for an assault on Sept. 9, 2024, in which he punched and slapped a 56-year-old woman in the face during an argument on E. Tremont Ave. and Grand Concourse in the Morris Heights section of the Bronx.
Johnson faces a mandatory minimum of 20 years to life for the attempted murder at Penn Station due to his status as a persistent violent felon, Mullan said.
Najjar has five prior arrests, most recently for contempt of court on Feb. 28, cops said.
The arson at Penn Station comes as Mayor Mamdani’s Department of Homeless Services faces increased scrutiny after at least 19 New Yorkers died on the streets amid a recent cold snap, 15 of whom succumbed to hypothermia. The majority of those who died had some contact with Homeless Services over the course of their lives, according to the city.