Contractor charged with killing South Philly man over dispute about paying for roofing work, DA says
Luis Cruz was being held without bail after he was charged Sunday with murder and related offenses in the killing of Joslyn Morgan, whose body was found last week wrapped in a blanket in the back of a smoking Jeep in a South Philadelphia parking lot.
A 39-year-old contractor has been charged with fatally shooting a client in the head and then trying to burn his body over a dispute about payment for roofing work, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office said Tuesday.
Luis Cruz was being held without bail after he was charged Sunday with murder and related offenses in the killing of Joslyn Morgan, 43, of the 5600 block of Sprague Street in East Germantown.
Morgan’s body was found last week wrapped in a blanket in the back of a smoking Jeep in a South Philadelphia parking lot, according to police. Authorities said he had been shot in the head and stabbed in the neck.
District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office said in a news release Tuesday that investigators collected video evidence, cellphone records, and witness testimony to discover that Morgan and Cruz “had a falling out over [Morgan’s] dissatisfaction with Cruz’s roofing work and refusal to pay.”
Cruz was interrogated this weekend, Krasner’s office said, and confessed key details of the crime to detectives, including his attempt to dismember and destroy Morgan’s body.
Cruz did not have an attorney listed in court documents. His preliminary hearing is scheduled for next month.
In 2016, court records say, Cruz was sentenced to four years’ probation after pleading guilty to providing false information regarding his firearm ownership.