Teen Dies After Being Set on Fire, Stabbed in Bronx Apartment Building: Police

Jack Phillips
By Jack Phillips
August 13, 2020US News
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Teen Dies After Being Set on Fire, Stabbed in Bronx Apartment Building: Police
Winston Ortiz (GoFundMe)

A teenager was killed after being lit on fire in New York City, said officials.

The 18-year-old victim, identified by officials as Winston Ortiz, was stabbed three times before he was set on fire in the Bronx at around 3 p.m. on Wednesday, authorities told the New York Post and ABC7. The suspect allegedly poured gasoline on him first, officials said.

The incident took place in the midst of a dispute on the fifth floor of a building in the Highbridge section of the Bronx, police said.

Police said the victim doesn’t live in the building, and the man was already in the fifth floor when the victim entered. After he was attacked, Ortiz was taken to the Harlem Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.

A woman, who asked not to be identified, told the NY Post that “I saw flames.”

“I thought her apartment was on fire. And when I go over there, I saw a guy in flames all over his body,” she said. The witness and another woman grabbed buckets and poured water on the victim.

“I got very scared because I have my girls here” in the building, she told the paper. “It’s ­really concerning.”

Police told ABC7 that the suspect fled the scene. No arrests have been made at this time.

A motive has not been determined in the attack.

According to a GoFundMe for Ortiz’s family, “After leaving his home to go see a friend, he was brutally murdered by cowards. He is survived by his mother and father, 2 younger brothers,grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.”

The slaying comes in the midst of a crime surge across New York City. NYPD figures show that shooting victims are up 81 percent from Jan. 1 to Aug. 2, compared with the same time last year, reported the Wall Street Journal.

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