![\"John](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1772741228_509_image.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\nA 47-year-old man has been charged with attempted murder\u00a0for allegedly setting fire to a homeless man sleeping at Penn Station on Monday.<\/p>\n
A second suspect was arrested\u00a0and\u00a0released.<\/p>\n
The office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg confirmed the arrests of Damon Johnson, 47, and Lyla Najjar, 33, in connection with the incident, but said the office\u00a0has “declined to prosecute” Najjar at this time, “pending further investigation.”<\/p>\n
In an initial account from the NYPD, police said three people\u00a0had set fire to the\u00a0victim, identified only as a 37-year-old homeless man, at about 8:40 p.m. Monday \u2014 lighting the victim\u2019s clothes on fire.<\/p>\n
A\u00a0third suspect has not been publicly identified.<\/p>\n
Paramedics transported the victim to the New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell burn center, where police said he was in stable condition. The trio of suspects fled the scene, police said.<\/p>\n
The victim suffered second-degree burns to his back and left arm, according to an Amtrak police officer’s account provided to Newsday by\u00a0the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.<\/p>\n
“I observed the Complainant seated behind a column with his legs and feet sticking out and visible in the video,” the account reads, referring to the victim.\u00a0“I observed a male individual wearing a brown jacket, white hat, jeans, and black and silver sneakers crouch down and lean over the Complainant extending an arm towards his back for a period of time.”<\/p>\n
The account then describes how, after some time, the victim got up and, fully visible on video, and ran while “his jacket is on fire.”<\/p>\n
Johnson was arrested the next morning, according to the DA’s office. He has “numerous prior convictions and\u00a0appears to be a mandatory persistent violent felon,” a spokeswoman for the office wrote to Newsday.<\/p>\n
Court records show Johnson is charged with attempted murder in the first degree, attempted assault in the first degree and assault in the second degree.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The records\u00a0show Johnson entered a plea of not guilty to all three counts and was remanded, due back in court Friday. He is represented by a Legal Aid attorney. That attorney did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
John Valenti, a Newsday reporter since 1981, has been honored nationally by the Associated Press, Society of the Silurians and National Headliner Awards for investigative, enterprise and breaking news reporting, as well as column writing. He is the author of \u201cSwee’pea,\u201d about New York playground basketball star Lloyd Daniels. His debut crime novel, \u201cFor Nothing Is Hidden,\u201d rooted in 1950s Long Island, was released in October 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 47-year-old man has been charged with attempted murder\u00a0for allegedly setting fire to a homeless man sleeping at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154435,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63,261],"class_list":["post-154434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}