Hiram Carrero, a 19-year-old high school senior who admitted starting a subway fire that left a homeless man severely burned, was sentenced Tuesday in Manhattan federal court to 5 1/2 years in prison.
Judge Lewis J. Liman imposed a term above the mandatory minimum for arson after Carrero pleaded guilty in March.
The attack took place in the early hours of Dec. 1, 2025, aboard a northbound subway train that had departed the 34th Street-Penn Station stop and was headed toward Times Square.
Prosecutors said the victim, a 56-year-old homeless man who was sleeping at the time, suffered severe burns, extensive scarring and disfigurement. They asked the court to sentence Carrero to as much as eight years, arguing in a presentence filing that his “heinous actions” critically injured the man.
When he entered his guilty plea, Carrero acknowledged that he intentionally lit a piece of paper that injured the man.
According to prosecutors, Carrero attempted to kill “a sleeping, homeless man by burning him alive and leaving him trapped on a moving subway car.” They said the victim survived only because emergency responders reached him quickly after what they described as a “mercifully short trip” from Penn Station at 34th Street to Times Square.
Prosecutors also said the offense was “separated from murder by mere chance,” and they dismissed Carrero’s explanation that he had been drinking and smoking marijuana that day.
Seeking a lighter sentence, defense attorney Jennifer Brown wrote that Carrero had endured a deeply troubled upbringing. She said he was born prematurely with drugs in his system and was left at the hospital by his biological parents after birth.
Brown also told the court that Carrero is intellectually challenged and that “things fell apart for him” when the pandemic hit in 2020 and cut off his ability to attend school.
“Words are inadequate to express the profound shame and remorse that Hiram feels,” Brown said.