A teary-eyed CVS worker who fatally stabbed an unhinged serial shoplifter inside a Midtown store testified Wednesday that he used a knife to “jab” the crazed man who “beat the s–t” out of him when going fist-to-fist — describing the bloody encounter as an act of self-defense.
Scott Enoe, 48, told jurors during his manslaughter trial in Manhattan that he used a small folding knife to “jab” Charles Brito, a 50-year-old homeless man, to protect his two female coworkers from the “crazy” thief inside the Times Square store in July 2023.
“He just beat the s–t out of me, I couldn’t fight this guy with my bare hands,” the Grenada-born man recounted in Manhattan Supreme Court.
“I think he could hurt them. This guy was crazy. I knew he could hurt them really bad.”
The former CVS shelf stocker said he was restocking drinks in a cooler when Brito, a known shoplifter at area drugstores, ambushed him from behind, threw a flurry of punches, and slammed his head against the refrigerated unit.
Enoe, who described being overpowered by Brito during the initial brawl, told jurors he jumped into action and pulled the unarmed homeless man away from his female coworkers after he approached them and “started to lift his elbows.”
The confrontation prompted Brito to repeatedly “lunge” at him, Enoe testified.
“He wanted to hurt me again. I gave him a jab. To get him off of me,” the former CVS worker said of the stabbing, adding that he didn’t realize how badly Brito was hurt.
When asked if he heard Brito say “ouch,” Enoe replied “no.”
He later walked back his original statement to police – that he had stabbed the homeless man as an act of revenge for punching him – following the fatal incident, claiming he wasn’t “thinking straight.”
“Yes, I said that to him but I wasn’t thinking,” he stressed, when pressed by Assistant District Attorney Julia Noble.
“I wasn’t thinking straight, I just got beat up. It was years ago.”
Prosecutors said Enoe used the small folding knife and stabbed Brito eight times – piercing his liver twice – before the bloody thief staggered onto the sidewalk and later died.
His co-workers, Katrina Rivera and Allandrea Hoollness, took the stand this week and testified that the chronic thief had burst through the doors of the Broadway and West 49th Street store and unleashed a series of menacing threats before attacking Enoe.
“I can kill y’all, I can kill everybody,” Brito shouted, Rivera, then-CVS manager, told the jury.
“He’s just basically saying he could do whatever he wants.”
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 habitual shoplifter was “aggressive” when he confronted the two workers, swinging his elbows – though never striking either – when a bruised and bleeding Enoe walked back up to him, both women testified.
“I just saw Scotty basically pull him off,” Holiness said.
“I saw them fighting, and the next thing I knew the shoplifter was screaming he’s bleeding, got stabbed. I saw the blood.”
Jurors saw photos of Enoe’s swollen eye and busted lip he suffered during the fight and a picture of the bloodied knife used in the scuffle.
Enoe, who is out on $100,000 bail, was charged with manslaughter for the fatal knifing.
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.
Enoe faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted.
