{"id":277054,"date":"2026-06-24T20:06:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T20:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/277054\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T20:06:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T20:06:10","slug":"new-york-teen-sentenced-to-more-than-5-years-after-setting-a-sleeping-homeless-man-on-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/277054\/","title":{"rendered":"New York teen sentenced to more than 5 years after setting a sleeping homeless man on fire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A high school senior who admitted to setting a fire that severely burned a homeless man on the subway was sentenced Tuesday in Manhattan federal court to 5 1\/2 years in prison.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Judge Lewis J. Liman gave Hiram Carrero, 19, a sentence that was longer than the mandatory minimum required for arson, after the teen plead guilty in March to the charge.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The early morning fire on Dec. 1, 2025, came among a series of attacks with\u00a0<a aria-label=\"Go to https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/chicago-woman-burned-train-4e43a526e3b93c217beca1d150c5ec1d\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/chicago-woman-burned-train-4e43a526e3b93c217beca1d150c5ec1d\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">people set on fire<\/a>\u00a0on public transit across the U.S.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In a presentence submission, prosecutors requested he serve up to eight years in prison, saying Carrero\u2019s \u201cheinous actions\u201d left the man, who was sleeping at the time, critically injured and with permanent extensive scarring and disfigurement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">During his guilty plea, Carrero admitted that he intentionally ignited a piece of paper that harmed the man.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In court papers, prosecutors said Carrero tried to kill \u201ca sleeping, homeless man by burning him alive and leaving him trapped on a moving subway car.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They said the man\u2019s life was saved only because emergency personnel reached him quickly after a \u201cmercifully short trip\u201d from Penn Station at 34th Street to Times Square.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The crime, prosecutors said, was \u201cseparated from murder by mere chance,\u201d and they were critical of his explanation that he had been drinking and smoked marijuana that day.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In seeking leniency for her client, defense lawyer Jennifer Brown noted in court papers that he\u2019d had a troubled past, starting when he was born prematurely with drugs in his system and was abandoned by his biological parents at the hospital after his birth.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Intellectually challenged, \u201cthings fell apart for him\u201d when the pandemic struck in 2020, eliminating his ability to attend school, the lawyer wrote.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWords are inadequate to express the profound shame and remorse that Hiram feels,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A high school senior who admitted to setting a fire that severely burned a homeless man on the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[2000,9,24,55,54,56,5001],"class_list":["post-277054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-homelessness","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-public-transit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277054","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=277054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}