MARION, South Carolina — The gun used to kill Police Officer Randolph Holder in East Harlem is the former service weapon of an ex-South Carolina state trooper who reported it stolen from his car in 2011 — just four months after he got it back following another theft.

A team of NYPD detectives last week traveled to the Palmetto State to interview former lawman Roderick Hughes, who was fired over an unrelated matter, to determine how his pistol wound up in the hands of the career criminal charged with fatally shooting Holder last month.

“One of our own died,” one of the cops told The Post when asked what he was doing down South.

Hughes, 39, joined the South Carolina Highway Patrol in 2003 and was issued the .40-caliber Glock Model 22 on June 6 of that year, according to the South Carolina Department of Public Safety.

The sidearm rode on Hughes’ hip until Dec. 11, 2007, when he turned it in and was issued a .45 GAP Glock Model 37 as part of a department-wide upgrade to the larger-caliber weapon, spokeswoman Sherri Iacobelli said.

The DPS sold its obsolete Model 22s to the Lawmen’s Safety Supply Store in Columbia, SC, and gave troopers the option to buy back their old guns for their personal use, Iacobelli said.

Lawmen’s Safety refused to comment, but law-enforcement sources said Hughes acted on the offer and bought his Model 22 — serial number HP 1193 SC — on Feb. 28, 2008.

In July 2008, records show, Hughes told cops in Mullins, SC, that the gun was stolen from his unlocked pickup at a repair shop he ran at the time.

The missing weapon was entered into the FBI’s National Crime Information Center database, and it was seized by cops in the nearby city of Florence, SC, during an unrelated drug raid in September 2009, sources said.

Hughes, meanwhile, was suspended from the Highway Patrol on July 8, 2009, pending an investigation linked to his sale of a 1992 Lexus to an ex-con.

He was fired on Oct. 14, 2009, for accepting cash and a used flat-screen TV as payment for the car, even though he owed money on a loan against the vehicle’s title, records show.

Hughes also angrily confronted the car’s buyer, Jamie Summerford, while on duty and in uniform to question him about contacting the lender over his unpaid loan.

Officials called those actions “unacceptable, unprofessional and embarrassing to the department.”

On June 6, 2011, Hughes went to the Mullins police headquarters and retrieved his Model 22 after signing a receipt, records show.

But on Oct. 12, 2011, he reported it stolen again, this time telling cops in Marion, SC, that the gun was swiped by someone who broke into his truck several blocks from his home.

This time, cops failed to enter the gun in the NCIC, and the next time it showed up on law-enforcement’s radar was Oct. 25, when an NYPD diver fished it out of the murky Harlem River.

Authorities say Tyrone Howard tossed the gun and a 30-round magazine into the water after shooting Holder five days earlier.

Hughes refused to discuss the gun thefts when The Post caught up with him outside his home in Marion, but said he was shaken by its role in Holder’s slaying.

“I’m an ex-police officer. You can imagine how I feel. That’s the only comment I have,” he said.



Additional reporting by Larry Celona and Bruce Golding