Bronx deli worker and father of two Jose Delacruz is not the deported drug dealer “El Toro” even though they share the same birthday and name, now if he could just get the cops to believe him. Hit the jump to read the rest of the story.
@WiL

Delacruz, 50, has been arrested four times, interrogated by the FBI and nearly deported – all because he has the same name and birthday as a wanted felon.

The Morris Heights sandwich maker did plead guilty in 1993 to attempted burglary, but he’s not Jose (El Toro) Delacruz, an ex-con who ran with a Soundview-based drug crew in the 1980s, sources said.

He has notified the city that he intends to sue the NYPD for $1 million over the mixups, saying he lives in constant fear of police.

“No matter what I do, they always think I’m him,” Delacruz told the Daily News. “It’s a terrible way to live. I’m scared all the time.”

The soft-spoken dad carries around a certified court document explaining he is not El Toro, who is wanted in a 1999 cocaine possession case.

Still, he keeps getting arrested after routine traffic stops and background checks, roughed up by disbelieving cops and accused of crimes he never committed, he said.

“My daughters think I must be guilty of something because this keeps happening,” Delacruz said. “I just want to clear my name.”

Delacruz recently shaved his mustache in an effort to look less like his felonious counterpart.

The other Jose Delacruz – who did a year-long prison stint on an 1986 drug rap – was recently deported to the Dominican Republic.

His unlucky namesake nearly got booted to the same country in April, when he was locked up in The Tombs for four days before federal agents determined they had the wrong man.

The mixup stunned a Manhattan judge, who wondered how authorities could have blundered so badly.

“You mean the person who’s in front of me is not the person who’s wanted in this indictment?” Judge Charles Solomon asked prosecutors. “It certainly doesn’t look like him, even with the passage of time.”

He was cleared of wrongdoing – but got arrested two months later while visiting Orlando.

Delacruz, who also was mistakenly arrested in 2007 and 2009, has struggled to find a better job due to his tainted moniker.

The Taxi and Limousine Commission refused to license him, believing he was a wanted criminal.

His civil lawyer, Elliot Kay, said there’s no excuse for the arrests.

“It’s obvious the police simply did not care that they were arresting the wrong person,” Kay said.

“They chose to ignore he fact that Mr. Delacruz does not look like the fugitive, his fingerprints do not match the fugitive’s and he had a letter from the court confirming that he’s not the fugitive.”

DN