A homeless man was held without bail yesterday for alleged back-to-back heinous blowtorch attacks on his estranged wife and the boss who recently fired him from an auto-body shop in Inwood.
Carlos Diaz allegedly attacked his wife in broad daylight at 8 a.m. Wednesday on Ninth Avenue near West 207th Street, burning her lips, eyelids, face, cheeks and neck, a prosecutor said.
Diaz, 35, believed she was cheating on him, so he sprayed her face with lighter fluid and used a blowtorch to ignite her, authorities said.
“In essence, Judge, her entire head was set on fire with an accelerant and a blowtorch,” said Assistant District Attorney Scott Leet.
She remains in critical condition at Harlem Hospital.
“He had no money, no job. He was sleeping in his van. He’d had enough,” a law-enforcement source said.
Diaz then hunted down his ex-boss in a nearby garage and doused him with gasoline — but the boss managed to escape as Diaz tried to ignite him.
Diaz turned himself in to police and gave a full confession to his intention, “to burn them both alive,” a source said.
He was expressionless as he faced the judge.