Like the television character he helped inspire, Donnie Andrews lived by a code.

In his earlier years, when he was robbing rival dealers as a young hustler in West Baltimore — experiences that would later form the basis for the popular Omar Little character on the Baltimore-based crime drama “The Wire” — he vowed to never involve women or children in his crimes.

But after confessing to a murder and helping authorities bring down a crime syndicate, he took on a different mission: working to prevent youths from going down the same path he did.

Andrews died Thursday after suffering heart problems while in New York City, where he was attending an event as part of his efforts to promote a nonprofit outreach foundation. He was 58.

“Donnie was truly a rare bird, a fierce street warrior who had been to hell and back,” said Sonja Sohn, an actress on “The Wire” who worked with Andrews in youth outreach. He “lived not only to tell about it, but to transform that pain and darkness into the brightest of lights, infused with the love he had for youth and communities suffering from the injustices of … life.”

Andrews, whose full name was Larry Donnell Andrews, had been around violence most of his life, physically abused by his mother and watching at age 10 from behind a washing machine as a man was bludgeoned to death for 15 cents. He grew up in the public housing developments of West Baltimore, where he was mentored by hustlers and drug dealers. He became a stick-up artist, robbing other drug dealers with a .44 Magnum.

“The word ‘future’ wasn’t even in my vocabulary, because I didn’t know if I’d be alive or dead tomorrow,” he told British newspaper The Independent in 2009. “They had a bet in my neighborhood that I wouldn’t reach 21.”

In 1986, roped in by drug kingpin Warren Boardley and looking to support a heroin addiction, he said he took on a contract killing, teaming with another man for the fatal, close-range shootings of Rodney “Touche” Young and Zachary Roach on Gold Street.

Prosecutor Charles Scheeler said Andrews was different from other suspects. Not only did he turn himself in, but he never angled for a lesser sentence. He simply confessed to the killing; Scheeler said they had little evidence to convict him otherwise.

“I prosecuted hundreds of people, but this was the only person this happened to,” said Scheeler, who developed an unlikely friendship with Andrews even before his conviction. “Everyone else in his position has been, ‘I will cooperate for less time.’ Donnie was, ‘I will cooperate because I want to repent.’”