Madman who set NYC passenger on fire was behind earlier similar incident: police

metro

From Joe Marino And Jorge Fitz-Gibbon

The mentally ill man who doused an unsuspecting passenger with burning liquid also tried to set fire to a group of commuters at a Manhattan subway station earlier this year, police said Sunday.

Nile Taylor, 49, who is in custody on assault charges in connection with the violent attack on 23-year-old Petrit Alijaj on Saturday afternoon at the Varick Street Station in Manhattan, has now also been charged with a similar incident on February 5 at the West 28th Street subway station, police said.

Surveillance video of the February incident shows a man, now identified as Taylor, holding two canisters of flammable liquid and hurling them at a group of people at the train station.

No one was injured in the incident; the suspect fled and remains on the run to this day.

At around 2:45 p.m. on Saturday, Alijaj and his fiancée were about to get off the 1 train at the corner of West Houston and Varick Streets and walk to the Statue of Liberty when Taylor allegedly threw a flaming liquid at him.

The fire victim told The Post on Saturday that he used his body to protect his girlfriend from the flames.

“I protect my fiancée with my body,” he said.

Alijaj eventually ripped off his burning shirt while his attacker fled the scene.

“I touched myself to put out the fire,” Alijaj recalled. “When I ran, I was burning.”

“The doctors said 30 percent of my body was burned. But I don’t think it’s 30 percent. Maybe more like 10 percent,” he said.

The victim was taken to New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Hospital for treatment of burns.

Taylor was caught by police about five blocks away at the corner of Canal and Renwick Streets, near the entrance to the Holland Tunnel – his death sentence was the cell phone he subsequently took from the subway platform so that quick-thinking police officers could track him down.

He was being questioned by NYPD detectives and awaiting arraignment on Sunday. Police identified him as the alleged suspect in the earlier incident, law enforcement sources said.

He is now accused of assault, arson, reckless endangerment and possession of weapons in the February case.

According to sources, Taylor was also arrested for theft of official duties in a sealed case and illegal possession of a firearm in 1997.

Meanwhile, he is not the only suspected arsonist in public transport.

In March, police charged Israel Montero, a dangerous Bronx man with a history of emotional disturbances, for setting fire to a garbage bag in a subway car at the 125th Street station in Manhattan.

The 49-year-old Montero even set fire to his own shoes during the fire on May 3, police said.