A deranged serial shoplifter yelled “I can kill y’all” earlier than the CVS shelf stocker now charged with manslaughter knifed him to demise at a Instances Sq. retailer, Manhattan jurors heard this week.
Witnesses took the stand at Scotty Enoe’s trial to explain the bloody scene that unfolded after Charles Brito, a 50-year-old homeless man, burst by way of the doorways of the Broadway and West forty ninth Road store in July 2023.
“I can kill y’all, I can kill everyone,” Brito shouted, then-CVS manager-in-training Katrina Rivera testified in Manhattan Supreme Courtroom.
“He’s simply mainly saying he may do no matter he needs,” Rivera, 45, instructed the jury, in line with a transcript obtained by The Publish.
“Then he mentioned he can kill individuals. I struggle individuals. Simply get out of my method, I’m gonna carry on coming.”
Enoe, 48, is charged with fatally stabbing Brito in what he says was self-defense.
Brito, a identified shoplifter at space drugstores, punched Enoe a number of instances in the course of the brawl that erupted after he made the threats, “smacking” the employee towards the doorways of coolers he’d full of drinks, one other witness mentioned.
Brito later made extra scary threats in one other space of the shop, the place two feminine workers tried to cease him from opening one other cooler, Rivera instructed the court docket.
The power thief had been arguing with Rivera and one other worker, Allandrea Hollness, when a bruised and bleeding Enoe walked again as much as him, each ladies testified.
Prosecutors mentioned Enoe then pulled out a small folding knife and stabbed Brito eight instances — piercing his liver twice — earlier than a bloody Brito staggered onto the sidewalk and later died.
Hollness, a prosecution witness, testified that the unarmed however “aggressive” Brito swung his elbows close to Rivera’s face in the course of the confrontation, although the slain man by no means struck both girl.
“These elbows saved flying?” protection lawyer Frank Rothman requested throughout cross-examination on July 17.
“Sure,” the 33-year-old Bronxite replied.
“That’s when Scotty got here?” Rothman requested.
“Sure,” Hollness responded.
“I simply noticed Scotty mainly pull him off,” she mentioned. “I noticed them combating, and the following factor I knew the shoplifter was screaming that he’s bleeding, obtained stabbed. I noticed the blood.”
Hollness additionally revealed that after the lethal episode, she instructed police that she didn’t like working nights on the CVS as a result of she feared being attacked by a violent drug addict.
“You’d surprise going to work what druggie was going to assault you?” Rothman requested her.
“A hundred percent,” Hollness responded.
Enoe, who’s out on $100,000 bail, faces as much as 25 years in jail if convicted.
Manhattan jurors — who’re set to begin deliberations by the tip of the week — can acquit him in the event that they discover that he acted “fairly,” both to guard himself or to guard Hollness and Rivera.
A CVS safety guard who witnessed the stabbing testified that his job was to “observe, watch and report” — however to not bodily confront anybody committing against the law.
“So individuals had been form of on their very own in the event that they get attacked? There was nobody within the retailer who may defend them?” Rothman requested the guard, Roosevelt Tucker.
“Proper,” replied Tucker, who testified that he didn’t carry a gun, taser or membership.
Enoe had “gotten the more serious” of the preliminary scuffle, prosecutors conceded in opening statements earlier this month.
Jurors noticed pictures of Enoe’s swollen eye and busted lip he suffered in the course of the encounter.
“The man was identical to holding on to Scotty with one hand and smacking him with the opposite,” testified one other eyewitness, then-CVS worker Jose Ramos Martinez.
“He was smacking him towards the cooler doorways,” Martinez instructed jurors.
