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Off-duty cop killed by burglars; former 'Sopranos' actor a suspect


BY VERENA DOBNIK

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK — An off-duty police officer was killed today in a gunfight with two burglars outside his home, and authorities said an actor from "The Sopranos" was a suspect.


Daniel Enchautegui, 28, a three-year veteran, was pronounced dead at a hospital following the 5:15 a.m. shooting, said Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.

He was the second officer to die in the line of duty in two weeks.

"This is a loss to the department and the city," said Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who joined Kelly at the hospital. "We now have another life to mourn, taken from us for no sensible reason."

The officer had returned to his Bronx home after finishing a late shift when he heard breaking glass in an unoccupied house next door, Kelly said. The officer first called his landlord, then called 911 to report a possible burglary.

The officer grabbed his off-duty weapon and went outside to investigate. His landlord heard Enchautegui shout, "Police! Don't move!", followed by the sound of gunfire, Kelly said.

The officer was struck once in the chest with a bullet from a .357-caliber revolver. Before collapsing in the driveway of the home, he returned fire and struck both of the suspects — one was hit twice, the other four times.

One of the suspects was identified by police as Lillo Brancato Jr., an actor who also appeared in several episodes of "The Sopranos" as Matt Bevilacqua, a mob wannabe who eventually was murdered. He made his debut in the Robert De Niro-directed film "A Bronx Tale" back in 1993.

Brancato was arrested in June for criminal possession of a controlled substance.

A police car on routine patrol arrested Brancato as he was getting into a car, police said. The second suspect, Steven Armento, was arrested as he ran from the scene. Police identified Armento as the gunman.

Both men were taken into custody without incident and were in serious condition, Kelly said.

First of all, it sounds like he wasn't wearing his vest. Next, going in alone is always dangerous.

More details:

"Here is some detailed and interesting info from the NY Times website.

Law enforcement officials said last night that both suspects had made self-incriminating statements and that Mr. Armento had admitted shooting the officer. They also said the men had planned to rob a drug dealer but had hit the wrong house, one that was vacant except for two second-story tenants, and had come away with nothing.

Both suspects live in Yonkers, where the police and neighbors said they had histories involving drugs, guns, fights, thefts and other trouble. The ties between the two were murky, but a neighbor said that Mr. Brancato had dated a daughter of Mr. Armento. The neighbor also that Mr. Armento had stalked his neighborhood with a pit bull and a gun, and that Mr. Brancato - who had portrayed mob wannabes in movies and on television - had a well-developed tough-guy swagger.

The battle yesterday unfolded on Arnow Place near Westchester Avenue in Pelham Bay about 5:20 a.m., the police said, after Officer Enchautegui, who had been on the force for three years and worked in the 40th Precinct in the Bronx, was awakened in his basement apartment at 3117 Arnow by the clatter of breaking glass.

Officer Enchautegui, who had been off duty for little more than five hours after working a 4 p.m.-to-midnight shift, got up and called his landlord, Henry Dziedzic, upstairs and asked if he had heard the breaking of glass. The landlord said that he had not.

The officer put on a black winter coat, slung his police shield around his neck, took his cellphone and off-duty pistol, an eight-shot KHR semiautomatic, and went out to investigate, Commissioner Kelly said. On the side of the house next door, at 3119 Arnow, he saw that a basement window had been broken.

Officer Enchautegui immediately called 911 for backup officers. Following procedure, the police said, he calmly identified himself as an officer and said he was investigating a possible burglary next door. He also noted that he was armed and was wearing his shield on a necklace, and he described his black coat so that he would not be mistaken for a burglar and possibly shot by fellow officers, the police said.

As Officer Enchautegui waited on the tree-lined street of red-brick homes, two men, one of them armed, emerged from the house he had under surveillance.

"Police! Don't move! Police! Don't move!" Officer Enchautegui shouted, loud enough for his landlord to hear.

Investigators - who said they had pieced together an account of what happened from evidence at the scene and from neighbors' descriptions of the sequence of gunfire - said that the armed suspect, identified as Mr. Armento, a parolee with three convictions for burglary and possession of stolen property, had fired first, with a .357 Smith & Wesson revolver.

The bullet struck Officer Enchautegui in the left chest, but he responded with at least six shots, investigators said, striking Mr. Brancato twice in the chest and Mr. Armento four times in the abdomen, chest, right leg and groin, before collapsing.

As the officer went down in his driveway, the wounded assailants hobbled west toward Westchester Avenue, a half block away, where two officers had just pulled up in a patrol car, responding to Officer Enchautegui's 911 call.

They first spotted Mr. Brancato beside a silver, late-model Dodge Durango, parked on Westchester Avenue. He was bleeding onto the door handle and into the street. They searched him, found no weapon, and arrested him.

The officers then turned into Arnow Place and saw Mr. Armento running at them with a gun in his hand, according to the police. He, too, was bleeding. The officers took cover, one behind a parked car and the other behind the corner of a building, and shouted at the approaching gunman: "Stop! Police! Drop the gun!"

At that, the man dropped his weapon and collapsed in the street, about 50 feet from the officers.

Back at the shooting scene, another officer and a sergeant found Officer Enchautegui, lying face up and bleeding in his driveway. He was breathing shallowly, apparently near death, and appeared to be unconscious. Emergency service officers administered cardio-pulmonary resuscitation, and he was taken by ambulance to Jacobi Medical Center, where further efforts to revive him failed. He was pronounced dead at 6:09 a.m.

Mr. Brancato's most recent appearance was in court last June after he was arrested by Yonkers officers who, in a routine traffic stop, said they found four envelopes of heroin in his possession. The disposition of that case was unclear yesterday. The police were called to a domestic dispute at his home at 55 Rushby Way last week, according to neighbors who said that the officers had found crack cocaine in his pocket. But there was no record of an arrest.

The police said Mr. Armento had a history of 13 arrests on weapons, drugs, burglary and other charges and three convictions that led to prison terms. A neighbor said she had obtained an order of protection against Mr. Armento after he had fired a shot at her heart and after his pit bull had attacked her fiancé. The police said he was currently on parole, and had been running with the murder weapon when captured, an assertion that will require ballistic tests to confirm.

Friends said Officer Enchautegui visited his parents almost every day, and often escorted his father, who has been ill, to medical appointments. The officer, who was Hispanic and spoke Spanish fluently, was described by Mr. Dziedzic as a conscientious, friendly tenant."


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"Sgt. Cyress Smith, who supervised him, recalled his last conversation with Enchautegui. It was about how his bulletproof vest fit too snugly, leaving unprotected gaps around the armpits. (Enchautegui wasn't wearing a vest when he was shot.)

"Daniel, you have to fix those gaps in your vest," Smith recalled telling Enchautegui as a jab.

Both cops started laughing.

"Now, it's ironic," Smith said. "It's very sad."
Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc."