The boss Ahmed, whose case is still pending, allegedly instructed Fonerin to use his cellphone to record him setting fire to the 38-year-old man.
Ahmed, 24, allegedly used lighter fluid and a box of matches to start the fire, and is allegedly heard on the video saying "do that s---," according to the criminal complaint.
Lorenzo Fonerin, 23, was working at a bodega with Suliman Ahmed on September 23, 2012, in East New York where Hand, who suffers from a severe mental illness, was sleeping on the sidewalk.
Hand was woken up by bystanders telling him he was on fire, and Fonerin then tried to put out the blaze with water.
"I was asleep when I found out my son was on fire ... the burns on his lower back were so bad it looked like leather," said Tasheen Hand's mother Priscilla during her victim impact statement in Brooklyn Supreme Court, where she urged the judge to throw the book at Lorenzo Fonerin.
"The defendant poured water on my son, but I would have been happier if he just asked him to leave or just used that same cellphone to call police. Pouring water didn't save him," Hand said.
Her son suffered severe burns on over 30 percent of his body, and was in a medically induced coma for two weeks.
Hand said her son, who was not present at the sentencing, is stared at by strangers on the street for his "alligator-like skin."
Prosecutor Cary Fischer asked Justice Deborah Dowling to sentence Fonerin to 20 years because this was the "most horrific" case he’d worked on in 12 years on the job, aside from one child abuse case.
Source: UK Daily Mail
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