A man was killed after being struck after trying so hard to get into a work truck in Philly’s Roxborough section that he tore off a door handle, police say.

According to Chief Inspector Scott Small of the Philadelphia Police Department, the incident unfolded at about 1 a.m. at the intersection of Ridge and Leverington avenues in Philadelphia’s Roxborough community.

At that time, Small said, officers responded to a report of a crash to find a 52-year-old man — identified by police as James Petrone — laying unresponsive in the roadway and suffering from head trauma after having been struck by a vehicle.

First responders pronounced Petrone at the scene at about 1:25 a.m., officials said.

In a morning update, police said that the incident is being investigated as a “perceived carjacking attempt.”

The incident happened, officials said, as a 60-year-old man was driving northbound on Ridge Avenue when Petrone is alleged to have approached a work truck, while armed with a five-foot-long tree branch, when he began pulling on one of the doors.

The man, Small said, pulled hard enough to break the door handle.

Believing he was being carjacked, officials said, the driver accelerated away from the scene and Petrone fell under the truck, causing a deadly head injury.

“We believe that work truck may have been the striking vehicle,” he said. “We are not certain at this time. but we know that this victim did pull on the door handle and actually broke it off because the door handle was under the victim’s body.”

The driver continued northbound before stopping on the 8100 block of Ridge Avenue and, officials said, the man returned to the scene of the collision and is cooperating with investigators.

In fact, as police investigated at the scene overnight, Small said the suspected driver of the work truck was currently being interviewed by police.

Yet, Small did not say if the driver would face charges in this crash.

Investigators have collected, and were reviewing, surveillance footage from that intersection to learn more, according to Small.

An investigation, he said, was ongoing.

This is a breaking news story. It will be updated as new information becomes available.