Roland Codrington’s Manhattan crime spree left a trail of blood and two dead bodies

The man behind the wheel of a dark blue 2021 Mercedes-Benz, unlike its owner, was still breathing.

Roland Codrington, 35, was stopped by alert NYPD officers while driving the high-end vehicle in the Bronx on Christmas Eve, about 2½ miles from Marcus Garvey Park. Police connected the luxury ride to a suburban pediatrician whose corpse, covered with 30 stab wounds, was discovered inside the 20-acre stretch of East Harlem in the early morning rain of Dec. 23.

But that was only the tip of the gory iceberg: The murder suspect was quickly linked by investigators to two earlier stabbings in a spate of Manhattan violence preceding his latest arrest.

Codrington was hardly surprised when the cuffs went on, one day after Dr. Bruce Henry was savagely slain, his body found inside the park at 2:40 a.m. with stab wounds to the back, torso, buttocks, eye and palms, according to court papers. A key fob with the Mercedes logo dangled from the suspect’s pants, the court papers said.

“I was in a dead man’s car, what do you think it means?” Codrington told the arresting officers, according to a criminal complaint. “I walked to the park and a guy made a comment to me that caused me to snap … I’m the one you’re looking for.”

The suspect with a rap sheet of 12 prior arrests then admitted to using the same knife in two earlier random stabbing attacks, one of them fatal, before tossing the murder weapon into the Hudson River after the doctor’s slaying on the eve of the victim’s 61st birthday, the complaint alleged.

Codrington had survived a pair of shootings in 2016 and earlier this year, police sources said, with a six-year-old Facebook post indicating he sought to turn his life around.

“God works in mysterious ways,” he wrote after the first shooting. “He saved me so I can save the youth.”

The one-man crime spree started Dec. 19, a random incident that escalated quickly after Codrington literally bumped into local resident James Cunningham outside Spike’s Bar on Avenue A near 13th St. in the East Village, cops said.

Cunningham, 51, was a regular at the bar, although his drink preference was club soda, according to his ex-wife’s partner.

“James moved here when he was 18 and he loved New York City,” said Mitch Okun. “He was never afraid of going anywhere in the city … He was a true New Yorker.”

A 40-second argument ended when Codrington exploded, slashing the stranger across his throat without warning, police said. A lethal 10-inch gash spilled Cunningham’s blood on the sidewalk as he collapsed and died, video obtained by the Daily News showed.

The suspect’s girlfriend stood watching the gruesome assault before the couple left the scene, and she was by his side for all three attacks before turning up at his Manhattan court appearance, authorities said.

“She’s involved in the investigation that’s still going on,” said NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig. “She hasn’t been charged yet.”

It was three days later when Codrington popped into Teddy’s Bar in East Harlem, where he was among the regular customers until an earlier incident led to his ejection, according to staffers. The angry Codrington, believing he was disrespected, returned with his girlfriend, a pit bull and a baseball bat, and immediately went after a female bartender, cops said.

A pair of Marines in the bar came to her defense, with Codrington pulling a knife and stabbing both men, police said. One was hospitalized with his injuries, including a pierced diaphragm suffered when he was stabbed twice in the back and once in the chest.

The suspect was quickly identified, with the NYPD issuing a photo of Codrington. By then, the East Harlem man had already walked from the bar to the park to chill out after the fight — only to fly into a deadly and still unexplained rage after running into the doctor, cops said.

The suspect was next spotted a day later with the stolen vehicle.

Codrington’s arrest was the latest in a series of crimes dating back to a 15-year-old incident where he was busted for an assault with a knife. Prosecutors said he was convicted in 2018 for slashing and stabbing a victim multiple times during an attack where a15-year-old bystander was also knifed in the back.

His most recent arrest for the fatal stabbings left Henry’s nephew shaken but pleased to learn Codrington was behind bars.

“Wow, wow, I’m so glad they got him off the streets,” said the nephew. “He looks like he’s going to be doing some long, long time there. He deserves it, man … Taking two people’s lives like that. I don’t understand it. I will never understand it.”