A man with 12 prior arrests was accused of killing a pediatrician in NYC, as well as a 51-year-old man murdered near Union Square in NYC a few days earlier.
The doctor was discovered dead in Marcus Garvey Park near 120th Street in Harlem, New York City, at around 2 am on Friday, December 23. He was identified as Dr. Bruce Maurice Henry, a 60-year-old pediatrician from the Bronx. Dr. Henry worked as a pediatric emergency medicine physician in the Bronx and was also affiliated with Children’s Hospital New Orleans and Nyack Hospital in Westchester. He had been in practice for over 20 years.
The suspect, Roland Codrington, 35, was arrested on Christmas Eve, and was caught after he was seen with his girlfriend driving Dr. Henry’s 2021 blue Mercedes Benz, that had been parked outside the Harlem park where Dr. Henry had gone for a walk in the middle of the night.
Chief of Detectives for the New York City Police Department, James Essig, confirmed that the suspect was a career criminal with 12 prior arrests.
According to police, the suspect was on a three-day killing spree. He stabbed to death a 51-year-old man in the East Village in Manhattan near Union Square on December 19, while accompanied by a “girlfriend.” The incident was caught on surveillance footage. On the night of December 22, he assaulted a bartender with a baseball bat at a Lower East Side bar, and stabbed two patrons who tried to help the victim, on the same night that the pediatrician was later killed.
Codrington then went into the park to “cool off” after the bar fight, reportedly with his girlfriend. He did not cool off.
During his walk in the park, he encountered Dr. Henry, and stabbed him after he was enraged by something in their interaction or perhaps it was unprovoked. The police official said Codrington fled the area, along with his girlfriend, in Dr. Henry’s car.
Earlier in the evening, a neighbor saw Dr. Henry driving his car out of his apartment building garage in the Spuyten Duyvil neighborhood in the Bronx.
One of the residents of Dr. Henry’s building said that the doctor was dressed casually as he drove out of the garage on the night of his death.
“He worked long hours at the hospital, and was always traveling,” the neighbor said.
“There are times he was working at the hospital and he would come in like wee hours and I’ve seen him walk into the garage with his hospital gear and stuff on,” the resident said.
New York City residents are unfortunately getting too used to violence and killings on the street, while Mayor Eric Adams recently announced plans for authorities to force mentally unstable individuals off the streets and subways and into psychiatric treatment, a move that is getting a lot of pushback.
