In the 1985 yearbook of Passaic Valley Regional High School in Little Falls, New Jersey, found by the New York Times, she sports painted eyes, the then very fashionable “Working Girl” perm, and a huge smile. 40 years later, the teenager had become a shadow, entrusted without identity to the autopsy after being burned alive in the New York subway on December 22.
The case took on major political significance after the man accused of the murder, Sebastian Zapeta-Calil, 33, was revealed to be an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala who had previously been deported from American soil in 2018. The new President-elect Donald Trump’s border official, Tom Homan, said it was a “disgrace” to the state and city of New York, illustrating everything his champion used as arguments during his campaign.
“Party forever”
“Jane Doe”, the name given in the United States for unknown people, was actually called Debrina Kawam. She was identified by fingerprints Monday, said Julie Bolcer, a spokeswoman for the city medical examiner’s office.
According to the New York Police Department, which was initially wrong, Debrina Kawam was 57 years old. This age corresponds to the Little Falls High School yearbook. The teenager seems to have lived happy years there, the album evokes memories of trips to the beach, of “long conversations” with friends. She talks about her plan to become a flight attendant and her “secret ambition” to “party forever”. A survey among the establishment’s seniors had also placed her among the three “punkest” girls in Passaic Valley, a little party-loving and crazy side that she compensated for with a “million-dollar smile.”
Some teenagers who grew up in Little Falls had happy paths, the illusionist David Blaine, a few authors, the Jonas Brothers… but Debrina Kawam led a life of excess and wandering. According to the New York Times, since the early 2000s, she had appeared for “dozens of minor cases” in coastal New Jersey municipalities, Jersey City and throughout New York. Lots of fines for drinking in public, drunkenness, disorderly conduct. His crime list mentions a last offense last July, for consumption of alcohol in public in the city of Atlantic City, famous for its casinos and its nightlife.
The Kawam family, originally from Brooklyn, settled in Little Falls in 1973. Debrina must have been 5 or 6 years old then. His father, William Kawam, who had served in the United States Air Force during the Vietnam War, was an assembly line worker at General Motors. He stayed there for 30 years, retiring in 2008, a year before his death at age 68. His daughter paid tribute to him on an online condolence page, writing of her regrets: “Let me tell you what a wonderful man my father was. He was sincere, honest, hardworking and the best father a girl could have. I will always regret having taken so long to understand it.” She concludes her message with a wink: “POPS SPLISH SPLASH”.
According to William Kawam’s obituary, Debrina had an older sister and a brother, Nancy and William. The website of the American Department of Justice mentions William Thomas Kawam from New Jersey, convicted in 2022 for tax fraud committed a few years earlier, when he was an independent accountant. It is not known what job Debrina did. In 2008, she said she had not worked “due to illness.”
Dozens of summonses for drinking on public roads
Debrina lived with a certain George Krammer from 2011 to 2014. According to Krammer’s wife, her late husband told her that their relationship had been complicated.
The New York police gave Debrina’s last known address, in the small town of Toms River. Questioned by the media Jersey Shore online, the mayor of Toms River, Daniel Rodrick, had this definitive statement against the homeless Guatemalan arrested, suspected of having set fire to the clothes of Debrina who was sleeping on the train: “The People found guilty of these types of crimes should be put down like rabid dogs! »
The New York Times visited Toms River, and described a small gray house on one level in a large retirement community. It likely belonged to Debrina’s mother, Phyllis, who sold it last spring. A neighbor, Valérie, says that the owner often walked with a woman in her fifties, Debrina perhaps, holding her hand because she seemed disabled. “I felt like the older woman had a lot to do to take care of the younger woman,” she said.
In May, a woman knocks on the door. “My name is Debrina, I want to see my mother,” she said to the new owner. Olga tells him that Phyllis has moved, she offers to take his contact details to give him news if she gets any. According to her account, Debrina Kawam responded that she did not have a phone and then quickly left.
To go where? She was in New York on April 28, when police issued her a summons in Midtown Manhattan for drinking on a sidewalk, according to city records. She was supposed to appear in June, but did not show up. After Atlantic City in July, social services records show she stayed at a women’s shelter in the Bronx from November 30 to December 2. It is unknown where she slept until December 22, perhaps in New York transport, from one terminal to another.
At 7:30 a.m. at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station in Brooklyn, according to video footage and statements by New York police and prosecutors, while she was asleep on a seat, a man pulled out a lighter and set his clothes on fire. Then he went out and sat on the dock and watched the flames burn her alive.
