New York — A man is being tried for Four men were beaten to death with a metal bar As they slept on the streets of New York City, he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia when he left prison months earlier and was hearing voices telling him he needed to kill 40 people or he would die too, his attorney told jurors Tuesday.
Randy Santos, 31, asserts his insanity defense during his trial in state court in Manhattan. Through his lawyer, he admitted to committing the Chinatown rampage in 2019. But they say he is not criminally responsible because Mental illness had polluted his mind with irrational thoughts Leaving him vulnerable to violence.
If they succeed, Santos could be sent to a psychiatric facility instead of prison.
“He needed the voices to stop. He needed his life saved,” Marnie Zane, Santos’ attorney, said in an opening statement. “He saw no other way out.”
Santos, 31, has pleaded not guilty to charges including first-degree murder in the death Florencio Moran, Nazario Vásquez Villegas, Anthony Manson, and Chin Kwok And attempted murder charges for assaults that seriously injured two other men. They were among 319 killings in New York City in 2019, including 52 in Manhattan.
Assistant District Attorney Alfred Peterson told the jury that surveillance video showed Santos “repeatedly raising the bar above his head and dropping it on the head” of one of the victims.
Peterson said a couple was on a date on Bowery Street in Manhattan and saw him hit another man with the same weapon. Police found Santos holding the penis covered in blood and hair. The public prosecutor said that tests showed his DNA on the one hand and the blood of some of his victims on the other.
If the jury convicts Santos and rejects his insanity defense, he could be sentenced to life in prison. Otherwise, he or she can remain involuntarily committed to treatment for as long as necessary.
Peterson urged jurors to consider Santos’ mental health claims and convict him on all charges, telling them that the evidence would show that Santos “knew exactly what he was doing and the consequences of what he was doing — that he was killing these men,” the prosecutor said.
Peterson said Santos looked up and down the street and “saw the coast was clear” before the attack began. Peterson said he then stopped to allow a pedestrian — and potential witness — to leave the area before wailing on another man. The prosecutor said he knew it was “legally and morally wrong.”
Santos identified himself in the surveillance video of the attack, Peterson said. After showing the footage after his arrest, he told police: “Yes, that’s me.”
Peterson said Santos, a native of the Dominican Republic who moved to New York as a child, attacked five men between 1:30 a.m. and 2 a.m. on Oct. 5, 2019, repeatedly hitting their heads with a 4-foot (1.2 meter) pole he found in the street. The ages of the victims range from 39 to 83 years.
The lone survivor, critically injured 49-year-old David Hernandez, staggered into a nearby street as police officers tried to revive another Santos victim.
Peterson said Santos conducted a “trial run” about a week ago, severely injuring another man by hitting his head with a wooden stick in a different Manhattan neighborhood.
Santos, who has been going back and forth from prison to psychiatric facilities since his arrest, wore an untucked white shirt and tie as he sat between his two lawyers at the defense table. He listened to Zinn’s opening statement through a Spanish translator, but held his headphones away from his ears while Peterson spoke.
Overcoming a crazy defense can be especially difficult in New York. Santos’ attorney must convince the jury that he did not understand the consequences of his actions and did not know right from wrong. This strategy had mixed results.
In 2022, the man who A young tourist was killed when he drove his car into crowds of people in Times Square He was acquitted of responsibility and sent to a mental institution rather than prison after the jury found that he was so psychologically disturbed that he did not know what he was doing.
But in 2018, the Manhattan nanny She was convicted of killing two children in her care While their parents were away after a jury rejected her attorney’s claims that she had an undiagnosed mental illness, she heard voices and saw hallucinations, snapped and did not know what she was doing.
Zain said Santos knew attacking the men was legally wrong, but – in his mind – he had to do it to save his life.
She said the ambush was the latest in a series of increasingly violent events that began with a clash with his grandfather.
At least six people have been arrested previously, including allegations that he punched a tourist who he thought was laughing at him on a subway, choked a man at an employment agency, and punched a homeless man inside a Brooklyn shelter, police said.
During his final stint in prison before the killings, Santos was diagnosed with schizophrenia, Zane said. Zain said he was released in August 2019 and was referred for treatment and prescribed prescriptions but never used them.
Santos had previously been diagnosed with schizophrenia, a short-term mental health condition, and showed up at the hospital complaining that he was hearing voices in his head, Zinn said.
She said he was asked about drug use but did not get the treatment he needed.