A man charged with bludgeoning four homeless men to death on the streets of Chinatown pleaded not guilty to the heinous slayings.
Randy Santos, 24, appeared in State Supreme Court in Manhattan on Monday for an arraignment on murder charges in connection with the Oct. 5 murders, in which Santos is accused of using a pipe to kill the homeless men. Santos’ not guilty plea likely lines him up for a psychiatric defense, according to reports.
Santos entered his plea through a Spanish translator, and a prosecutor recounted the brutal beatings which began just before 2 a.m. on East Broadway in Chinatown.
“He began his first attack on a sleeping homeless individual,” Prosecutor Alfred Peterson said in court, according to a Daily News report. “He hit him seven times about the head causing blunt force trauma.” Santos then turned his attention to a group of men, again using the metal pipe in the beating.
Investigators reportedly located Santos a few blocks away, holding the bloody pipe.
All four men died of blunt impact head trauma with skull fractures and brain injury, according to the medical examiner. The victims were identified as Chuen Kwok, 83, Nazario Vazquez Villegas, 55, and Anthony Manson, 49. The fourth victim has yet to be identified, and a fifth victim survived the attack.
Investigators have yet to identify a motive in the violent attacks; police have said it doesn’t seem anybody was targeted by race or age.
Santos, who is homeless, is being held at the Bellevue Hospital jail ward. He has 14 past arrests, including an assault charge from May. After his arrest his mother, Fioraliza Rodriguez, said she’d kicked him out of her house three years ago because he was addicted to drugs, assaulted her and his grandfather and stole from the family. “I never thought he would kill someone,” Rodriguez told the Daily News. “I was afraid of him, though, because he punched me. That’s when I told him to get out of my house.”
After the killing spree, NYC officials deployed additional homeless outreach resources to Chinatown.
