Bouncer charged in B’klyn stab slay

A bouncer was charged with manslaughter in the stabbing a rowdy Brooklyn bar patron during a brawl over a drink bill that expanded into the street, authorities and sources said.

Maurice Hartridge, 43, was nabbed Saturday in connection with the 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, Pa., was hanging out at the bar for “quite some time” 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, Kenny said.

“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, a criminal complaint said.

Dawkins “made a punching motion” toward Hartridge, prompting the bouncer to grab him and push him backward, the complaint said.

He is next scheduled to appear in court Friday.