A New York City subway rider was set on fire by a man, 49, jumping in front of his fiancée to absorb a flaming liquid tossed at them, leaving him with burns over 30% of his body.
"I protect my fiancée with my body," Petrit Alijaj, 23, told the New York Post, detailing how Nile Taylor had a cup of flammable liquid he lit on fire and tossed it at his future wife and cousin, who were headed to visit the Statue of Liberty.
This was the second such New York City Subway burn incident in four months, and the suspect is under investigation for that attack, too.
"He had a cup," he continued, pointing to a cup on his hospital bedside, "like this, maybe smaller, something inside, like oil, he made fire and he threw it all."
Alijaj ran off the train with his shirt on fire, ripping it off and keeping the fire from doing more damage.
"I touched myself to put out the fire," he told the Post, indicating he tried to pat the flames off his shirt doused with the flammable liquid, adding "while I was running I was burning."
Police arrested Taylor five blocks away at Canal Street and Renwick Street, near the entrance to the Holland Tunnel.
A New York City firefighter helped treat Alijaj's burns with a showering from a truck hose before he was sent to New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Hospital when his burns on his neck, ears, chest, arms, and left hand began to blister, according to the report.
"The doctors said 30% of my body was burnt," he said.
The crime was committed just days after presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump held a campaign rally in hostile political territory in the South Bronx, warning about the crime and issues caused by mass migration flooding and terrorizing the city.
"We're going to bring safety back to our streets," Trump in a rally broadcast on Newsmax. "We're going to bring success back to our schools. We're going to bring prosperity back to every neighborhood and every borough of the greatest city in our land.
"We're going to reduce taxes. We're going to bring businesses and big taxpayers back to New York. Got to bring them back. We got to bring them back.
"And we're going to make New York bigger, better, and more beautiful than ever before, and that includes right here in the Bronx, and it's going to be done and funded – starting on Jan. 20 – directly from our great and beautiful White House. Is that OK?"