New York man gets 40 years to life for killing four homeless men

A Manhattan judge tied Randy Rodriguez Santos’s crimes to a broader civic collapse, saying the case exemplified the “coming together of three horrible symptoms of this city: homelessness, mental illness and narcotics abuse.” Santos, 31, was sentenced Wednesday to 40 years to life in prison after a New York State Supreme Court jury convicted him in February of four counts of first-degree murder and three other violent felonies.

Prosecutors said Santos carried out the attacks in Chinatown in the early hours of Oct. 5, 2019, striking five sleeping unhoused people with a metal bar over roughly 30 minutes between about 1:30 a.m. and 2:00 a.m. Four men were killed: Anthony Manson, Nazario Abdelardo Vazquez Villegas, Florencio Moran Camano and Chuen Kok. David Hernandez, 49, survived serious injuries. Prosecutors said Kok was struck after Santos briefly abandoned the weapon, then returned to retrieve it and continue the assault. They also said Santos attempted to murder a sixth man in Chelsea eight days earlier.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office called the killings “chilling” and said the victims were “completely defenseless and unable to protect themselves.” District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg Jr. said unhoused people deserve the same level of safety as anyone else, a statement that underscored how the case became a measure of New York City’s failure to protect people living on the street. The violence drew renewed scrutiny of a homeless population that had reached record size, with the city’s shelter system holding 89,732 people in November 2025.

At trial, Santos’s lawyers argued that schizophrenia made him legally unable to be held responsible. They said he believed he had to kill 40 people or die himself. Prosecutors countered that Santos knew what he was doing and understood the attacks were wrong. The jury rejected the insanity defense on Feb. 19, 2026.

Santos had also told The New York Times that he was living on the streets and in an abandoned building and did not remember the attack. Police reports cited by the Associated Press showed at least six prior arrests by 2019, including allegations that he punched a stranger on a subway train, choked a man at an employment agency and punched a homeless man inside a Brooklyn shelter. Together, the record points to a long chain of warning signs, unmet psychiatric needs and repeated contact with the criminal system before the killings reached a courtroom.