Witnesses reveal terrifying moment NYC shoplifter threatened ‘I can kill ya'll' before CVS worker fatally stabbed him: testimony
Witnesses took the stand at Scotty Enoe's trial to describe the bloody scene that unfolded after Charles Brito, a 50-year-old homeless man, burst through the doors of the Broadway and West 49th Street shop in July 2023.
'I can kill ya'll, I can kill everybody,' Brito shouted, then CVS manager-in-training Katrina Rivera testified in Manhattan Supreme Court.
4 Scotty Enoe, a former CVS employee accused of fatally stabbing a shoplifter in 2023, at his trial in Manhattan Supreme Court on July 16, 2025.
Steven Hirsch
'He's just basically saying he could do whatever he wants,' Rivera, 45, told the jury, according to a transcript obtained by The Post.
'Then he said he can kill people. I fight people. Just get out of my way, I'm gonna keep on coming.'
Enoe, 48, is charged with fatally stabbing Brito in what he says was self-defense.
Brito, a known shoplifter at area drugstores, punched Enoe several times during the brawl that erupted after he made the threats, 'smacking' the worker against the doors of coolers he'd filled with drinks, another witness said.
Brito later made more frightening threats in another area of the store, where two female employees tried to stop him from opening another cooler, Rivera told the court.
The chronic thief had been arguing with Rivera and another employee, Allandrea Hollness, when a bruised and bleeding Enoe walked back up to him, both women testified.
4 Enoe claims he stabbed Charles Brito in self defense.
Prosecutors said Enoe then pulled out a small folding knife and stabbed Brito eight times — piercing his liver twice — before a bloody Brito staggered onto the sidewalk and later died.
Hollness, a prosecution witness, testified that the unarmed but 'aggressive' Brito swung his elbows near Rivera's face during the confrontation, though the slain man never struck either woman.
'Those elbows kept flying?' defense lawyer Frank Rothman asked during cross-examination on July 17.
4 Katrina Rivera, a CVS manager-in-training at the time, testified that Brito yelled 'I can kill y'all' after barging into the store.
Helayne Seidman
'Yes,' the 33-year-old Bronxite replied.
'That's when Scotty came?' Rothman asked.
'Yes,' Hollness responded.
'I just saw Scotty basically pull him off,' she said. 'I saw them fighting, and the next thing I knew the shoplifter was screaming that he's bleeding, got stabbed. I saw the blood.'
Hollness also revealed that after the deadly episode, she told police that she didn't like working nights at the CVS because she feared being attacked by a violent drug addict.
'You would wonder going to work what druggie was going to attack you?' Rothman asked her.
'One hundred percent,' Hollness responded.
Enoe, who is out on $100,000 bail, faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted.
Manhattan jurors — who are set to start deliberations by the end of the week — can acquit him if they find that he acted 'reasonably,' either to protect himself or to protect Hollness and Rivera.
A CVS security guard who witnessed the stabbing testified that his job was to 'observe, watch and report' — but not to physically confront anyone committing a crime.
4 Enoe's defense attorney said that the CVS employee was getting his head bashed in by Brito before the stabbing.
Steven Hirsch
'So people were kind of on their own if they get attacked? There was no one in the store who could protect them?' Rothman asked the guard, Roosevelt Tucker.
'Right,' replied Tucker, who testified that he didn't carry a gun, taser or club.
Enoe had 'gotten the worse' of the initial scuffle, prosecutors conceded in opening statements earlier this month.
Jurors saw photos of Enoe's swollen eye and busted lip he suffered during the encounter.
'The guy was just like holding on to Scotty with one hand and smacking him with the other,' testified another eyewitness, then-CVS employee Jose Ramos Martinez.
'He was smacking him against the cooler doors,' Martinez told jurors.
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