Police said Tuesday that they had tracked a silver Infiniti that sped away from the scene of Coto’s killing to a motel in New Jersey, where they arrested Joseph C. Desmond, 29, on a parole violation.
Desmond, who was being questioned by police about Coto’s death, had been released from prison in April after serving four years in New York for drug possession and an unrelated assault, prison records show.
The killer left Coto, 33, near the road, bludgeoned and bleeding from the head, police said. By the time emergency services found him, it was too late. Coto was pronounced dead at Coney Island Hospital shortly afterward.
“He was just a beautiful brother I’m going to miss forever,” his older brother, Ishmael Coto, said Tuesday. “Best guy you could ever know.”
When he was not working a shift at Engine 245 in Coney Island, Faizal Coto worked on his music career under the stage name Faiya, according to his Facebook profile. He spoke proudly of his diverse heritage: His father was Indonesian and his mother had Puerto Rican and Sicilian roots, his brother said. He was raised in Flatbush, Brooklyn, where he attended Midwood High School.
On Saturday night, he was out with friends in the Bay Ridge area of Brooklyn, where he lived. At about midnight, he posted a screen shot of himself hoisting a beer at a neighborhood bar called Skin Flints. Nearly five hours later, he was driving onto the eastbound Belt Parkway, when his vehicle collided with a silver or gray Infiniti G35 as both cars merged onto the highway, police said.
At 4:47 a.m., the two cars pulled over to the side of the parkway near Exit 4, at 14th Avenue and Bay 8th Street. For reasons that remain unclear, the other driver then appears to have viciously attacked Coto, possibly with a baseball bat, police said.
Shortly afterward, the Infiniti was spotted by security cameras fleeing east on the Belt Parkway. Emergency responders found Coto on the ground, next to his vehicle, with severe trauma to his head, police said.
His Facebook page on Tuesday was filled with remembrances about his buoyant spirit.
“He was proper, decent and lovely, friend with all and a dream maker,” wrote Louis Rigaud Bois, who said later that the two had met at Coney Island Hospital when Coto worked as a clerk there, before becoming a firefighter three years ago. “Not a hint of malice, always smiling.”
Law enforcement officials said Tuesday that New York detectives and U.S. Marshals had used license-plate readers to track the silver Infiniti to the Circle Motor Lodge in South Amboy, New Jersey, where they arrested Desmond at about 11 p.m. Monday.
He was being held Tuesday evening at the Middlesex County jail in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
In 2014, Desmond pleaded guilty to a second-degree assault classified as a hate crime, and was sentenced to one year in jail. According to the criminal complaint filed with the Queens district attorney, in 2012, Desmond approached a man on the street in Ridgewood, Queens, near where he lived at the time. He called the man a homosexual slur, then shocked him with an electric stun gun.
In 2013, before he was imprisoned on that charge, Desmond was arrested in Staten Island and pleaded guilty to drug possession. He was sentenced to serve four years in prison and five years probation, the Staten Island Advance reported. Corrections records show Desmond entered prison in 2014 and was released on parole in April.
A wake will be held for Coto on Wednesday at Leone Funeral Home on Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn. His funeral is slated for Thursday morning. There was a sense of disbelief among his friends that he could just suddenly be gone.
“He was a great guy, everyone around him enjoyed his spirit and how happy he was all the time,” said Albert Bravo, a firefighter who met Coto during their time at the Fire Academy, in an interview. “He was a talented music artist, also. He was always smiling and full of life.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.