Police reportedly arrested the man whom they suspect killed an off-duty Coney Island firefighter during an apparent bout of road rage that turned deadly after his and the victim’s cars collided on the Belt Parkway on Dec 9.
Authorities with New York’s Finest and United States Marshalls cuffed the 29-year-old at a New Jersey motel, according to a Tuesday New York Post report citing law-enforcement sources, which a Police Department rep could not immediately confirm.
The crash occurred before sunrise, as the man driving a 2006 Infiniti G35 sedan and the victim merged their vehicles onto the Gravesend-bound side of the Belt Parkway via the on ramp from Fourth Avenue, according to authorities, who later identified the suspect as the Infitini’s registered owner, the Post reported.
Both drivers pulled over on the side of the parkway near Exit Four to 14th Avenue-Bay Eighth Street following the collision, which damaged the driver’s side of the suspect’s four-wheeler, cops said.
Officers from the 62nd Precinct responding to a 911 call following the incident arrived at the scene around 4:50 am, and found 33-year-old Ditmas Parker Faizal Coto — a member of New York’s Bravest with Coney Island’s Engine 245 — unconscious and unresponsive on the pavement next to his car, cops said.
Paramedics then rushed Coto to Coney Island Hospital where doctors pronounced him dead, police said.
The city’s medical examiner determined Coto died from blunt force trauma to the head, according to a spokeswoman, and the suspect reportedly smashed the victim in the skull with an unknown object during the fatal attack, according to CBS News.
But the medical examiner’s spokeswoman could not confirm whether the suspect hit Coto with an object, and a Police Department spokeswoman could not confirm that the pair got into an argument that resulted in the deadly blow.
