NYC bouncer accused of fatally stabbing rowdy patron when bar brawl spilled into street: cops
A bouncer was charged with manslaughter for allegedly stabbing a rowdy Brooklyn bar patron to death during a brawl over a drink bill that spilled into the street, authorities and sources said.
Maurice Hartridge, 43, was nabbed Saturday in connection to the deadly stabbing of Daryl Dawkins, 37, just outside of the Catch 22 bar on Third Avenue near 73rd Street in Bay Ridge shortly before 3 a.m. April 7, the NYPD said.
Dawkins, a former Brooklynite who moved to Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania, was hanging out at the bar for “quite some time” and “trying to buy numerous women drinks” before the trouble started, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny told reporters last week.
He claimed he paid for a drink that he never received, according to Kenny.
“At some point, he begins to argue with a female bartender about his bill,” the police official said. “He gets to the point where a male bartender comes over, and asks him to kind of cool out a little bit. He refuses. At this point, the bouncers decide that he’s going to be escorted outside.
“At one point [in] some very grainy video, it appears he swings on one of the bouncers and there’s a physical altercation,” Kenny added. “And then you see him fall to the floor. He receives one stab wound to the upper left chest [that] hits him in the heart and aorta.”
Hartridge, who lives in the Bronx but was working as a bouncer at the Brooklyn hotspot, was “the last person to make physical contact” with Dawkins before he fell to the ground, according to a criminal complaint.
Dawkins “made a punching motion” toward Hartridge, prompting the bouncer to grab him and push him backward, the complaint said.
Video from a nearby surveillance camera appears to show the victim on his hands and knees after he was stabbed — as bystanders slowly gathered around him.
Officers found the victim with a torso wound and rushed him to NYU Langone Brooklyn, but he didn’t make it, authorities said.
Dawkins was ordered held on $50,000 cash bail or $100,000 bond, according to the DA’s office.
He is next scheduled to appear in court on Friday.
Neighbors previously told The Post the bar has a reputation for rowdiness.
“The place is always crazy, always an argument outside,” a female resident said.
Several other locals echoed the woman’s comments, yelling toward the building that the city has “got to close this place down.”
Moses Alhusaini, 39, manager of M&S Minimarket across the street, told The Post he had seen lots of problems at the bar during the pandemic, including “crowds fighting at that place.”
“It was crazy very often, but now they are holding it down,” he said. “The owner is taking it very seriously. That’s why I am shocked and surprised to see this now.”
A bartender at the watering hole declined comment to The Post a day after the deadly attack.
