Career criminal is arrested for string of deadly stabbings in NYC, including Manhattan pediatrician

A career criminal accused of carrying out a five-day spree of violent knife attacks across New York City was arrested by cops on Christmas Eve.

Roland Codrington, 35, is charged with murder and attempted murder for the deadly crime binge, which left two dead, including a pediatrician – and at least three others injured.

The killing began in the East Village on December 19, cops said, when Codrington fatally slashed a 51-year-old man’s neck as he left a bar around 1am. The incident was captured on surveillance footage.

Three days later police say Codrington entered a bar in East Harlem around 11.30pm with a pit bull and a baseball bat. Cops said the suspect went behind the bar and choked a female bartender. Two bargoers tried to intervene, and were stabbed by Codrington. All three victims survived.

Around 2.15am Friday the NYPD said the suspect stabbed another man, a 60-year-old doctor, in a nearby park. The NYPD said the pair had a brief conversation before Codrington became enraged and stabbed a Manhattan pediatrician multiple times. His savaged body, still warm, was discovered by police less than an hour later.

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Cop Friday revealed that Codrington has 12 prior arrests, and was nabbed while driving the black Mercedes of Bruce Maurice Henry, the pediatrician who cops said was the last confirmed victim of the slew of slayings.

According to NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell, who spoke to reporters about the arrest on Christmas Eve, ‘three sharp-eyed officers with the 30th Precinct in Upper Manhattan made the apprehension’ after determining the vehicle was stolen.

Around 9.40 pm, as families gathered for the holiday, detectives stopped the stolen car at 166th St. and Jerome Ave. in the Bronx – just over the Macombs Dam Bridge and out of the officers’ official sphere of influence.

They say they soon discerned Codrington’s identity, at which point he surrendered without a struggle. 

Cops are now looking whether Codrington – who appeared in court Monday only to be remanded back to Rikers Island where he will undergo psychiatric evaluation – is connected to any unsolved stabbing incidents in Manhattan. There have been several in recent months.

While imprisoned, the suspect – who is being charged with two counts of murder, two counts of attempted murder, one count of assault and one count of criminal mischief – will be put on suicide watch and kept in a separate cell from the general prison population, cops said.

Prior to being picked up Friday, Codrington already had at least 12 prior arrests – including vehicle-related arrests from earlier this year, two instances of assault with a weapon in 2017, criminal possession of a knife, assault, knife robbery and a knife assault.

Law enforcement sources, however, told The Post that Codrington has actually had as many as 20 prior busts, as some of them have been sealed. 

He was allegedly hit with a gun-possession rap in 2013 and a string of arrests ranging from second-degree robbery to fare evasion dating to 2005, the sources said.

Codrington also reportedly had an open arrest warrant before his new arrest – though It was not clear what case the warrant, issued in September, was tied to.

Records show he has done three stints in state prison, and was released from the Mohawk Correctional Facility in Oneida County in April 2021 after serving a three-to-six-year bid for illegal gun possession.

He was also sentenced to up to four years on another gun-possession charge and released in August 2017, and did an additional two years for attempted robbery before being released 2012, records show.

The NYPD added that Codrington’s girlfriend was present for several of the attacks – and can be seen in footage of the second attack at Teddy’s Bar on Second Avenue in Harlem.

The unnamed woman – who has not yet been charged – can be seen in the footage holding back the dog, ready to pounce, as Codrington confronts the woman behind the bar.

The NYPD has since said that Codrington had been in the bar about a week prior to the incident and had at some point felt ‘disrespected’ by the employees. 

Four days before those stabbings, cops said that Codrington – who was seen wearing studded slippers and prison garb during his brief court appearance Monday – slit the throat of James Cunningham, who was found dead on lying in a pool of blood on Avenue A near East 13th Street around 1am. 

Police said the victim had left a nearby bar, where he drank a seltzer and left, before being suddenly attacked. 

The seemingly unprovoked strike saw the 51-year-old’s life carelessly snuffed out, after he sustained a deep 10-inch gash to his neck, police said.

Cops said Codrington, who again was with his girlfriend at the time, got into a dispute with Cunningham outside the bar before the brutal slashing.

 Within 20 seconds, the violent ex-con cut across Cunningham’s throat. 

‘Our male was just walking out of the establishment,’ NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig said during a briefing on the arrest Monday. ‘There’s no prior interactions. They bump into each other. They have a 20-second, caught-on-camera dispute.

‘Our perpetrator just takes out a knife and slashes across the neck and then leaves.’

Then, early Christmas Eve, cops discovered the brutalized body of Bruce Maurice Henry, 60, of the Bronx, in Marcus Garvey Park near the 120th Street and Madison Avenue entrance, shortly after 2am. 

Stabbed multiple times with his throat slashed, the doctor was pronounced dead within the hour.

It comes as even the nicest of Manhattan’s have become hotbeds for crime amid a recent rash of violence that has persisted since the pandemic. 

Grand larceny, or thefts of $1,000 or more, have spiked more than 60 percent in the past year according to the latest New York Police Department crime statistics.

Perhaps more pressing, though, is that fatal stabbings and slashings are also up an alarming 37 percent in the Big Apple this year. The NYPD has logged 96 blade-involved killings so far in 2022, compared with 70 for the same period in 2021, when such offenses were already up from prior years. 

Overall, stabbings and slashings are up 10 percent for the year, with 4,344 compared to 3,954 last year. Cops are continuing to look into Codrington, who remained in isolation as of Monday afternoon. Police said Monday that their investigation is continuing.

During his address Chell thanked the three officers for getting such a dangerous figure off the city’s already seedy streets on a night where citizens and tourists alike were busy reveling in the city’s Christmas decorations and buying last-minute gifts.

‘It was just a great plan on Christmas Eve when everyone was out shopping, we were still working,’ Chell said, praising his police force. ‘Thank God we put this to bed.’ 

Police did not reveal a motive for the attacks.