CORRECTION APPENDED

José F. Alegría '07, a 21-year-old recent Harvard College graduate and former Eliot House resident, died early last Friday morning in an automobile accident in Puerto Rico, the Spanish-language newspaper El Nuevo Día reported the day of the crash.

Alegría was driving a Lexus RX10 in the Puerto Rican city of El Condado at around 5 a.m. on June 29 when he crashed the vehicle into an electrical post, a tree and an iron door.
[SEE CORRECTION]

Alegría was thrown from the car upon impact and fell under the tires, a spokesman for Police Headquarters in Puerto Rico told El Nuevo Día.

Police said that Alegría was driving at excessive speeds at the time of the crash.

Claudia B. Dubon ’10, who attended St. John’s High School with Alegría in El Condado, attended services Monday at Iglesia San Jorge de Santurce.

“It’s a huge shock to his friends and family,” Dubon said. “The accident took place only a block away from his house.”

A government concentrator at Harvard, Alegría also completed a secondary field in economics and was a member of the Charles River Growth Fund, an investment club on campus. Alegría was to begin work in investment banking at Goldman Sachs in New York City on July 15.

“He was supposed to leave for New York [Monday],” Dubon said.

Alegría was also a member of a final club, the Phoenix, one of eight all-male social organizations on campus, since his sophomore year.

Fellow Phoenix club member Christopher K. Ludwick ’08 said that Alegría showed a unique passion for the organization.

“He was one of the most active members of the Phoenix,” Ludwick said. “He really loved the club. No matter what he did, he did it very passionately.”

At St. Johns High School, Alegría served as student council president and was named a National Merit Scholar. In 2002, he competed in the International Math Olympiad in Glasgowe, finishing with a ranking of 431st in the world.

“José was known for being brilliant, but also for always being so nice to everyone,” Dubon said.

José Félix Alegría Benítez was born on July 31, 1985. He is survived by father José E. Alegría, owner of OBRA Gallery in Old San Juan, mother Yolanda Benítez, a lawyer, and sister Carolina Alegría, an incoming freshman at Amherst College.

—Staff writer Giselle Barcia can be reached at gbarcia@fas.harvard.edu.

CORRECTION: The article reported that El Condado is a Puerto Rican city. It is in fact a neighborhood in the city of San Juan, PR.