A homeless man was injured after he reportedly caught on fire inside Manhattan’s Penn Station on Friday night and investigators are probing the cause of the blaze, authorities and sources said.
First responders swarmed the major transit hub around 7:50 p.m. after MTA police received a report of a man on fire inside a commuter passageway at the station, according to police.
MTA cops discovered the man, 67, with burns to both legs and his upper body, the NYPD said.
He was taken to NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in stable condition.
By early Saturday, it remained unclear how the fire started or if criminality was a factor.
The man told police he believes somebody set him ablaze, claiming he was sleeping and woke up on fire, law enforcement sources said.
But investigators so far have found no evidence to support someone else was involved.
While there are no surveillance cameras where the man was discovered, others nearby did not capture anyone leaving the scene, the sources said.
Authorities were focusing the investigation on a New Jersey Transit tunnel near tracks 1-12.
The tunnel was cordoned off by police tape as authorities concentrated on what appeared to be a blanket on the ground.
Some commuters passing by the scene were unnerved to learn of the subway fire.
One passenger who frequents the passageway where the blaze occurred said the area has long been a hub for delinquency, noting homeless people are typically sleeping in the hallways, which are poorly lit.
“This is exactly the way I come to the office every day,” Secaucus software engineer Rahul Vemula, 29, told The Post.
“It feels a little scary to travel everyday. Especially this hallway, it doesn’t seem safe sometimes. I see a lot of homeless people around here, at least in this hallway, this pathway. And it seems a little scary when you walk [it]. They need more lights and to move the homeless people from here.”
Friday night’s incident comes less than a week after a sleeping woman was set on fire and killed on the F train in Brooklyn, allegedly by a Guatemalan migrant who had been deported in 2018.
