Suspect In Fatal Carjacking Previously Arrested 30 Times

24-year-old Joshua Colon was arrested in an incident on Monday which led to the death of local business owner Phil Dellegrazie. (Image via NYPD)

A criminal from Bensonhurst with a lengthy rap sheet has been accused in Monday’s carjacking, which left a beloved father and business owner dead and a community shaken.

DNAinfo reports that 24-year-old Josua Colon was released from prison just 12 days before his fatal encounter with the iron works business owner:

Joshua Colon, 24, who’s been arrested about 30 times and spent half of 2014 in prison, was arrested Monday after he stole 63-year-old Phil Dellegrazie’s truck from outside his Sunset Park ironworks and then ran him over, killing him, officials said.

Colon has committed a string of carjackings and other crimes beginning in 2013, according to Brooklyn prosecutors and incarceration records.

Phil Dellegrazie, who opened A & D Iron Works approximately 45 years ago, was beloved for his generosity by many neighbors. (Photo by Donny Levit / Park Slope Stoop)

After the incident, we spoke to neighbors and friends of Dellegrazi who remembered the man as a loving father and generous man who would “give you the shirt off his back.”

Neighbor Tony Santana said he has known Dellegrazie for 25 years.

“You see all of those gates across the street over there? Phil worked on all of them. He’s done so much for the neighborhood,” he told The Stoop.