A terrified MTA bus driver, doused with lighter fluid by a deranged Brooklyn passenger, feared his life and 23-year career were about to go up in flames.
Hassin Burton, 57, instead survived the unprovoked attack in which the rider fled last Saturday after making a chilling threat to set the city employee ablaze.
“I’m gonna light you up,” he recalled the crazed suspect telling him. “Watch what I do to you, I’m gonna f— you up.”
Burton recounted the nightmarish showdown to the Daily News on Wednesday. He said the situation escalated in an instant after his assailant approached the driver inside the otherwise empty Sheesphead Bay-bound B44 bus.
“I was shocked, I was surprised — I mean, what the f—? This guy’s trying to set me on fire?” said Burton. “(He) sprayed me with the lighter fluid, all over my clothes and on my face. He punched me in my chest, he punched me in my face.”
The suspect was involved only minutes earlier in a bloody brawl with another passenger who knocked him unconscious, apparently for disrespecting the rider’s girlfriend.
The driver, working on his usual day off, pulled over on Nostrand Ave. near Empire Blvd. in Crown Heights after the fight, with the passengers all exiting the bus — except for the knockout victim.
“The guy that started it,” said Burton of his assailant. “He was laying on the floor, out cold. He was bloody … My first impression was he was drunk. Then the last impression was he was mad, because of what that guy did to him.”
The driver, two years short of retirement, called his supervisor and asked for an EMS crew to help the punching victim before the assailant regained consciousness.
The man became instantly combative while clutching a plastic bottle of the flammable liquid. He threatened and swore at Burton before threatening to set him afire. The driver took the outburst dead seriously.
“I didn’t see a lighter,” the city worker said. “But he said he’s going to light me up, so I…
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