Murder-charge actor 'did not know accomplice was armed'

The US actor accused in the murder of an off-duty policeman told jurors today he did not know his alleged accomplice was armed when he went to an apartment looking for drugs.

Taking the witness box in his murder trial in the Bronx, Lillo Brancato sought to fend off suggestions by the prosecution that his testimony was another acting job.

“Is this a role you’re playing today?” his lawyer Joseph Tacopina asked at the end of a day-long stint giving evidence.

“Absolutely not,” the 32-year-old defendant responded.

Brancato – known for playing a wannabe mobster on 'The Sopranos' – is charged with murder in the December 2005 gun death of Officer Daniel Enchautegui.

Authorities say Steven Armento and Brancato, who got his big acting break opposite Robert De Niro in the 1993 film 'A Bronx Tale', broke into the ground-floor apartment to steal prescription drugs after a night of drinking at a strip club.

Mr Enchautegui, who lived next door, came out to investigate.

Armento shot the 28-year-old officer with his .357 Magnum, hitting him in the heart.

The dying officer fired back, wounding both men. Armento was convicted earlier this year of first-degree murder.

Brancato testified that there was a never a break-in. He claimed that he had known the owner, a Vietnam veteran, for several years.

He also said he had permission to go inside and take painkillers and other pills whenever he felt like it, and did not know the man had died earlier that year.

The pills were part of a drug problem that he said began when he was “introduced to marijuana” on the set of 'A Bronx Tale'. He later became hooked on crack and heroin, he said.

He told the jury that while suffering from judgment-impairing heroin withdrawals on the night of the shooting, he accidentally broke the kitchen window of the apartment in a desperate attempt to wake up his old pill-supplier.

“I was becoming dope sick,” Brancato said. “Mentally, I was a mess.”

Brancato and Armento left momentarily to try to get drugs from a drug dealer. When that failed, they returned to the apartment and came face-to-face with the officer.

“I heard someone say, ’Don’t move,”’ Brancato said. “I turned around quickly and I was shot twice.”

Brancato said he ran away, not knowing he’d been shot by a police officer. When uniformed officers stopped him, he lifted up his shirt to show them he was wounded.

“Please help me,” he said he told them. “I don’t want to die.”

The trial continues.