Jury convicts man in killings of 4 people sleeping on NYC streets,
rejecting insanity defense
[February 20, 2026]
By JENNIFER PELTZ
NEW YORK (AP) — 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.
Also convicted of attempted murder and assault charges that include a
September 2019 attack, Santos faces a potential life sentence.
Sentencing is set for April 16.
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.
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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.
Santos was diagnosed with schizophrenia before the killings but
didn’t take his prescribed medication or go for treatment, his
lawyers said.
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.
“He believed, sincerely, he had to kill 40 people or be killed,” one
of his Legal Aid lawyers, Arnold Levine, said in his summation.
“Psychosis replaced Randy’s moral judgment.”
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