Jury convicts man in killings of 4 people sleeping on NYC streets, rejecting insanity defense

NEW YORK — A man who fatally beat four sleeping men on the streets of New York City's Chinatown was convicted Thursday of first-degree murder, with a jury rejecting his insanity defense in the 2019 rampage.

Randy Santos' attorneys conceded that he pummeled the defenseless victims — Chuen Kok, Anthony Manson, Florencio Moran and Nazario Vásquez Villegas — with a metal bar and meant to kill them.

But the lawyers contended that he was too mentally ill to be held criminally responsible. They said he was driven by schizophrenic delusions that made him believe he had to kill 40 people or would die himself.

Prosecutors countered that Santos took steps, such as sometimes looking out for potential witnesses, and made remarks that showed that he knew that the October 2019 attacks were both illegal and immoral.

''A jury determined that Randy Santos knowingly and purposefully murdered four men with a metal bar in the span of less than 30 minutes. They were strangers to him and simply happened to be sleeping on Chinatown sidewalks that horrific night,'' Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement. Jurors, who had deliberated for less than a day, declined to comment.

Santos, 31, showed no reaction as he heard the verdict, through headphones that allowed him to listen to a Spanish-language interpreter. The Legal Aid Society, which represented Santos, said it would appeal.

''There is no dispute that Randy has suffered for years from schizophrenia, including on the nights of these tragic events,'' the group said in a statement.

The killings spurred scrutiny of the city's struggles to aid and protect a homeless population that had reached record size. Then-Mayor Bill de Blasio said the violence shook ''the conscience of who we are as New Yorkers.''

Kok, 83, was a former restaurant worker who had lost his bearings after his wife died and his church closed. Manson, 49, helped establish a Pentecostal church in Mississippi years ago and later made videos and blogged about his thoughts on Scripture, psychology and societal issues.

Vásquez Villegas, 55, was a factory worker whose family said he had a home on Staten Island and just apparently fell asleep in Chinatown, where he liked to pass the time with friends. Moran, 39, was a onetime aspiring boxer who had formed friendships with other men who lived on the streets, according to Spectrum News/NY.

Karlin Chan, a Chinatown community activist who knew Manson and raised money for a headstone for Kok, called the verdict ''the best outcome.'' Having followed the case in court, he was unpersuaded by Santos' insanity defense: ''A lot of people hear voices'' and never hurt anyone, Chan noted.

The Dominican-born Santos came to New York as a young man to live with relatives. They ultimately kicked him out because of his erratic and violent behavior, including an assault on his grandfather. New York police arrested him at least six times over the years on charges that included physically attacking people on a subway train, at an employment agency and in a homeless shelter.

Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Alfred Peterson maintained that Santos "knew exactly what he was doing that night, despite his mental illness.''

In a closing argument, Peterson said Santos carried out the September 2019 beating as a ''trial run'' and showed awareness of wrongdoing when he shed some clothing afterward. At one point brandishing the rusted metal bar that was used in the killings on Oct. 5, 2019, the prosecutor stressed that Santos briefly held off attacking some of the victims until a passerby was out of eyeshot. And, Peterson noted, the defendant told a prosecution psychiatrist in 2024: ''I know it's not a good action.''

Santos' attorneys said that while he might have realized he could get arrested, schizophrenia made him unable to appreciate that what he was doing was morally wrong — a factor that can be enough to support an insanity defense.

A defense psychologist testified that Santos believed that if other people experienced the commanding voices in his head, they would do the same thing he did.