Cops have identified the suspect they believe set a club promoter on fire in Times Square — but he has fled the country to Egypt, police sources said Wednesday.
NYPD detectives zeroed in on the suspect’s identity after linking him to a food cart that was operating near the Nebula nightclub on W. 41st St. near Broadway during the 4 a.m. Sunday attack.
Victim Mark Whyte, 45, remains in critical but stable condition after being doused with gasoline and set ablaze following some kind of argument with the attacker.
By the time police identified the 23-year-old suspect he was already on his way to Egypt, police sources said. The suspect either knows the food cart vendor or was working at the cart himself when he attacked Whyte, cops believe. Cops have not released the suspect’s name.
As the two men argued, Whyte’s attacker grabbed a gasoline canister from the food cart and emptied it on the victim before starting the blaze.
Whyte was rushed to New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell. Friends describe him as a well-liked party promoter who organizes celebrity shindigs.
“It’s absolutely horrific. You can’t even imagine. It’s disgusting,” Zachary Depew, a friend and former colleague of Whyte’s told the Daily News Monday. “He’s stable but he’s critical at the same time. He has third-degree burns. He’s still in the hospital. He’s in a lot of pain.”
YouTube video surfaced of a dazed but conscious Whyte standing shirtless on the street as cops and medical personnel covered him with a blanket in the aftermath of the attack. Burns are visible on his face, chest, torso, neck and back.
“I mean just from the pictures he is in so much shock,” Depew said of his friend. “You can tell he’s sizzled.”
Police are working on the theory that Whyte and the suspect knew each other before the attack.
“I don’t know why anybody would do something so gruesome to somebody regardless of whatever happened,” Depew said. “I don’t know the story of what came about but I don’t care what happened. Nobody deserves to be set on fire.”
Nebula opened in November 2021, boasting a multilevel 11,000–square-foot space that can accommodate up to 700 revelers — making it the largest nightclub to have opened in Manhattan in years, Time Out reported at the time.