{"id":139179,"date":"2026-02-19T20:40:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T20:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/139179\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T20:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T20:40:09","slug":"nyc-jury-rejects-insanity-defense-convicts-suspect-in-chinatown-homeless-murders-on-all-counts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/139179\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC jury rejects insanity defense, convicts suspect in Chinatown homeless murders on all counts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A man accused of carrying out the 2019 killings of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/2019\/10\/07\/chinatown-residents-mourn-homeless-murder-victims-police-say-attacks-were-random\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">four men sleeping on the streets of Chinatown<\/a> was found guilty on all counts Thursday, with a jury rejecting an insanity defense.<\/p>\n<p>Jurors took less than four hours to find Randy Santos guilty of four counts of first-degree murder, attempted murder, and related offenses for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/2019\/10\/07\/chinatown-residents-mourn-homeless-murder-victims-police-say-attacks-were-random\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the Oct. 5, 2019, killings<\/a> of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/2019\/10\/07\/chinatown-residents-mourn-homeless-murder-victims-police-say-attacks-were-random\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Chuen Kok<\/a>, Nazario V\u00e1squez Villegas, Anthony Manson, and Florencio Moran.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" lazyautosizes lazyload\" alt=\"Randy Santos was taken into custody after he allegedly bludgeoned four homeless men to death as they slept in Lower Manhattan on Saturday, Oct. 5, 2019, including at this location outside 2 Bowery St.. A fifth victim was taken to New York Downtown Hospital in critical condition. (Theodore Parisienne for New York Daily News)\" width=\"3300\" data- src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/DNFL-P23-20191005-073311.jpg\" data-attachment-id=\"8712896\" \/>Randy Santos was taken into custody after he allegedly bludgeoned four homeless men to death as they slept in Lower Manhattan on Saturday, Oct. 5, 2019, including at this location outside 2 Bowery St.. A fifth victim was taken to New York Downtown Hospital in critical condition. (Theodore Parisienne for New York Daily News)<\/p>\n<p>Santos, 31, who has diagnosed schizophrenia, had pleaded not guilty in the case by reason of mental disease or defect.<\/p>\n<p>Santos could face a prison term of life without parole when sentenced on April 16. Had the jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity, he would not have been released but likely involuntarily committed to a state-run psychiatric facility.<\/p>\n<p>This developing story will be updated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man accused of carrying out the 2019 killings of four men sleeping on the streets of Chinatown&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139180,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[262,263,266,85,267,75,84,83,9,24,264,12,63,261,265],"class_list":["post-139179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-city","tag-county","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-county","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-crime","tag-sub-county-region"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}