What started as a shouting match over a blocked driveway turned deadly yesterday when a Brooklyn father was shot and killed outside his home by an angry motorist.
Joseph Coll, 36, died from a single gunshot to the chest, police said, after an early-morning argument with a man whose car was blocking Coll’s Bushwick driveway.
Police and witnesses said the murder began as an argument that got so heated, Coll and the man who would later kill him bumped each other’s cars.
According to police, the killer left the scene and returned with a gun. No arrests have been made.
Lydia Rojas, who lived for four years with Coll in an apartment in her father’s house on Weirfield Street, said the man was blocking her father’s driveway, and her boyfriend asked him to move.
“He had an argument with this guy over my father’s driveway,” Rojas said.
“He told the guy to move the car, and they got into an argument and the man came back with a gun and shot him.”
Rojas said both men were animated, banging on each other’s cars shortly after 1 a.m.
“I went out, and they were fighting,” Rojas said, through tears. “I just had my robe on. By the time I went to get dressed, they said he had been shot.”
Rojas said she later met Coll’s parents at the hospital. She said the couple’s relatives all treated each other like family, and that she has a special bond with Coll’s mother, Lydia, because they share the same name.
“My family loved him,” Rojas said.
Among those left to mourn, Rojas said, are two of Coll’s children from an earlier marriage, a 9-year-old daughter, Jennifer, and a 13-year-old son, Joey, who live with their mother.
Those who knew Coll best described him as a kind, family man who made friends easily.
An uncle of Coll’s, who declined to give his name, called his nephew a “good guy,” and said the shooting “was just stupid.”
“He was the most talented person,” the uncle said. “He could fix anything.”
But what Coll liked to fix most was cars. When he wasn’t working at his job for a security company, he was helping neighbors and friends fix motors and mufflers in his spare time, Rojas said.
When he was at work, he called his beloved Lydia every day, reminding her to take her insulin for the diabetes she endures.
“He was that kind of person,” she said.