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Man who killed 4 homeless people in Manhattan convicted of murder
By
Samantha Max
Published Feb 19, 2026
Modified Feb 19, 2026
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Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images
By
Samantha Max
Published Feb 19, 2026
Modified Feb 19, 2026
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A man with schizophrenia who killed four homeless people and injured two others in 2019 knew what he was doing and should be held criminally responsible for his actions, a Manhattan jury decided Thursday.
The jurors convicted Randy Santos of all the charges against him, including first-degree murder, after less than a day of deliberations. Santos’ defense attorneys had argued at trial that he should not be found guilty because of his mental illness.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement that Santos “knowingly and purposefully” attacked strangers while they were sleeping.
“Now, he has been held accountable for his crimes,” Bragg said.
Santos is expected to be sentenced in April.
“While we respect the jury’s verdict, we disagree with it,” Redmond Haskins, a Legal Aid Society spokesperson, said in a statement. “We will appeal and continue fighting on Randy’s behalf. There is no dispute that Randy has suffered for years from schizophrenia, including on the nights of these tragic events.”
The case centered on two violent attacks against homeless people in September and October 2019. In this first, prosecutors said, Santos beat a man with a stick near the Hudson River and tried to throw him in the water, only stopping when witnesses intervened. Days later, he used a heavy metal pipe to bash the heads of multiple men as they slept outside in Manhattan’s Chinatown, according to prosecutors.
“They never woke up,” Senior Trial Counsel Alfred Peterson said during the prosecution’s closing argument. “Their lives ended while they were sleeping.”
Florencio Moran, Nazario Vásquez Villegas, Anthony Manson and Chuen Kok died from their injuries, while two other men survived, according to the DA’s office.
Legal Aid attorney Arnold Levine argued his client should not be held responsible because he was experiencing symptoms of psychosis. He said Santos heard a voice commanding him to kill 40 people, or else he would be killed himself. Santos couldn’t afford to fail at his mission, the lawyer said.
“Randy sincerely believed what he was doing was morally justified and others in his position would do the same,” Levine said during his closing statement.
Santos targeted vulnerable, sleeping people and aimed for their heads because he took the voice’s threats seriously, the defense lawyer said.
“When you’re being commanded to kill or be killed, you don’t aim for the knees,” he said.
New York law allows criminal defendants to argue they should not be held responsible for a crime because of a “mental disease or defect.”
They have to convince a jury that, because of their mental illness, they didn’t understand the consequences of their actions or that what they did was wrong.
Before jurors started deliberating, Justice Laura Ward told them they would need to decide whether Santos knew his actions were either against the law or “commonly held moral principles.”
If they found he was not criminally responsible, she said, the court would hold hearings to assess his current mental state and determine whether he should be involuntarily hospitalized.
Prosecutors did not deny Santos’ schizophrenia diagnosis. But they argued Santos knew his behavior was wrong despite his mental illness.
Peterson showed jurors surveillance footage of him removing several articles of clothing after an attack and throwing them in a dumpster, suggesting that he didn’t want police to recognize and arrest him.
He also showed videos of Santos glancing around and waiting for a witness to pass before beating people, which he said suggested Santos didn’t want anyone to see him.
“He knew he was killing human beings that day,” Peterson said, adding, “His mental illness was not so severe that he didn’t understand.”
This story has been updated with new information.
Tagged
manhattan
public safety
Samantha Max
Samantha reports on whether New Yorkers feel safe and whether the institutions that are supposed to protect them are working. Before coming to WNYC/Gothamist, she spent three years covering the criminal justice system in Tennessee for Nashville Public Radio. Her reporting on Nashville's police department received multiple awards, including the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize. Samantha was also part of the inaugural class of Report for America, a service journalism program that sends up-and-coming reporters to local newsrooms across the country. She is a Northwestern University grad, a Baltimore native and fluent in Spanish. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal: samanthamaxwnyc.93.
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