A man convicted of bludgeoning four homeless men to death was sentenced to 40 years to life in prison on Thursday, in a case that a Manhattan judge said highlighted the city’s challenges addressing mental health, homelessness and violence.
In February, a jury took less than a day to find that the man, Randy Rodriguez Santos, had intentionally killed the victims, whom he attacked as they slept in Manhattan’s Chinatown in October 2019. The jury rejected the argument from Mr. Santos’s lawyers that he should be found not guilty because of mental disease or defect.
The judge who sentenced Mr. Santos, Laura A. Ward of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, said that Mr. Santos’s case exemplified the “coming together of three horrible symptoms of this city: homelessness, mental illness and narcotics abuse.”
“I’ve been on the bench for about 30 years, and those are the three things that seem to be the constant in almost all of our violent crime cases,” Justice Ward said.
The men who were killed, whose ages ranged from their late 30s to their 80s, were Anthony L. Manson, Nazario A. Vazquez Villegas, Chuen Kwok and Florencio Moran Camano.
The news of the killings highlighted the vulnerability of people living on the street in New York and demonstrated how people with severe mental illness, even those who are known to city agencies, can fall through the cracks. In the years since, episode after episode of violence, some of it fatal, has reignited concerns over the safety of homeless New Yorkers.
Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, said Mr. Santos’s actions “shook New York City.”
“He displayed an appalling disregard for the lives of his victims, who were completely defenseless and unable to protect themselves,” Mr. Bragg said in a statement after the sentencing. “Unhoused individuals deserve the same level of safety as anyone else, and I hope the resolution of this case serves as a reminder of the work that remains in protecting and supporting our most vulnerable residents.”
As he sat in court on Thursday, Mr. Santos, dressed in the tan jail uniform of Rikers Island, looked back at a woman in the gallery. The woman appeared to give him a small wave.
Moments before Justice Ward announced his sentence, Mr. Santos, 31, addressed the court. He began by saying he felt “bad about what I did.”
“I wish it never happened,” he said. “My mind is much better now. I feel like a different person now.”
Mr. Santos said that since his arrest, he has been on medication, which he said he needs.
At the time of the attacks, Mr. Santos was 24 and homeless. He had moved to New York City from the Dominican Republic about five years before and had struggled with his mental health; his aunt told The New York Times that he had become depressed and was using illegal drugs that made him paranoid. Mr. Santos had been in and out of shelters and spent time in jail on charges that included assaults. In the months before the killings, his mental decline had begun to worry those who knew him.
Throughout the trial, Mr. Santos’s lawyers argued that it was his mental illness that had driven him to kill the men. Mr. Santos, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, heard voices, the lawyers told the jury, and lacked the capacity to know and appreciate that his actions were morally wrong. At the time, he believed that he had to kill 40 people to save his own life, his lawyers said.
Prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney’s office argued that Mr. Santos understood what he was doing on the day he killed the men. They said Mr. Santos had gone on a “trial run” in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, where he attacked a sleeping man with a stick.
People intervened and chased him away, they said, and the man did not die.
About a week later, Mr. Santos went on another attack, but this time he was on “the hunt” for a weapon, prosecutors said. Just before 2 a.m. on a Saturday, with a metal bar in hand, he found the sleeping men and started delivering blows to their heads, they said, at one point pausing when he saw a person walking by.
Arnold Levine, a lawyer for Mr. Santos, told the judge on Thursday that his client’s case is “tragic all around.”
“Obviously, most of all for the victims,” Mr. Levine said. “It’s also tragic for Mr. Santos, of course. You will be sentencing a person, and not a crime, today. And the person you are sentencing is severely mentally ill and there has been no dispute about that throughout the case.”
In his own statements, Mr. Santos acknowledged that he would most likely be sent to prison for a long time. He plans to use that time to learn English and complete his education, he said.
“I want to be somebody when I get out of the jail,” Mr. Santos said.
Hurubie Meko is a Times reporter covering criminal justice in New York, with a focus on the Manhattan district attorney’s office and state courts.
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