By Gabriela Resto-Montero and Ben Fractenberg
DNAinfo Staff
MANHATTAN —Police arrested two teens Wednesday who allegedly attacked a deliveryman in a Morningside Heights apartment, the NYPD said.
Charles Codrington, 16, of the Bronx, and another 15-year-old teen are both being charged with burglary and robbery, police said. Two more suspects are still at large.
Police released a video showing three of the teens, who police described as between 15 and 19 years old, beating the deliveryman as he exited the elevator on the sixth floor of 40 Morningside Avenue near 118th Street on Friday.
The suspects are shown on video kicking and punching the man and reaching into his pocket in an apparent attempt to take his wallet, police said, but they fled before they were able to grab his money. The assault was caught on security camera.
After running out of the building, the attackers met up with a fourth teen who acted as a lookout in Morningside Park, police said.
Neighbors in the building said they raced to the deliveryman's aid after hearing yelling and scuffling in the hallway. One neighbor on the sixth floor ran out into the hall and found the man lying on the ground in the hallway and rushed to bring him ice for his bruises and water to drink.
"His left eye was bruised and bleeding," said a woman who lives on the sixth floor who declined to give her name, "I was really disgusted, because the neighborhood is changing. The culture is to do a lot of take-out orders, we don't want the restaurants to feel like they can't deliver food."
Another neighbor, Kobi Rodriguez, 23, called the attack "horrible."
"It came out of nowhere, this is a quiet, personable building," she said.
Police said one of the suspects was between six-feet and six-feet-two-inches tall and was wearing a black and grey hoodie with a red backpack.
A second suspect, of medium build and measuring between five-foot-six and five-foot-eight inches tall, wore a black hooded Nautica jacket with white on the back.
Another suspect measured between five-foot-six and five-foot-eight-inches tall and wore a black bubble jacket.
The last suspect, who police said had a small build and stood between five-foot-four and five-foot-seven inches tall, wore a yellow hoodie and blue jeans.
Police ask anyone with information about the attempted robbery to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-8477.
