A deranged maniac who bludgeoned four homeless men to death during a grisly 2019 killing spree in Chinatown was found guilty of murder and other charges Thursday.<\/p>\n
The jury needed just four hours to reach a verdict to convict madman Randy Santos, 31, who claimed he heard voices urging him to \u201ckill 40 people\u201d to \u201csave his own life\u201d before the pre-dawn attack on Oct. 5, 2019.<\/p>\n
Santos bashed the vagrants\u2019 skulls with a metal bar after he went stopped taking schizophrenia medication and went off the rails, his lawyer, Legal Aid attorney Marnie Zien, said during his trial.<\/p>\n
Randy Santos bludgeoned four homeless men to death during a grisly 2019 killing spree in Chinatown, New York City. Steven Hirsch for NY Post<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was real to Randy,\u201d she said of the voices in her client\u2019s head. \u201cHe needed the voices to stop, he needed to save his life and didn\u2019t see another way out because of the schizophrenia.\u201d<\/p>\n
But prosecutors maintained he knew what he was doing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the defendant\u2019s own words, he knew what he was doing was, quote, not a good action,\u201d Assistant District Attorney Alfred Peterson said during closing arguments this week.<\/p>\n
Santos said he heard voices urging him to \u201ckill 40 people\u201d to \u201csave his own life\u201d before the fatal attack on Oct. 5, 2019. Steven Hirsch for NY Post<\/p>\n
\u201cHe says he\u2019s afraid of a hero,\u201d Peterson said. \u201cPeople in the community that are going to come and stop him. He recognizes, and this is a key point He knows that what he is doing is against the commonly held beliefs of the community.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese two statements give powerful insight into what the defendant knew about what he did.\u201d
Peterson was referring to a videotaped interview Santos had with a psychiatrist after his arrest.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid you know it was wrong to kill?\u201d the psychiatrist asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course. I know what I\u2019m doing, because I don\u2019t want to be killed,\u201d Santos told the psychiatrist.<\/p>\n
Kwok (Kok) Chuen was one of four people killed by Santos. Tomas E. Gaston<\/p>\n
\u201cWho is going to kill you?\u201d the doctor asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cA hero,\u201d Santos answers during the taped interview.<\/p>\n
Santos, who has been in and out of psych wards since his arrest, argued at the trial that he did carry out the gruesome murders, but was not responsible due to a \u201cdisoriented, diseased mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
He showed no emotion as the verdict was read.<\/p>\n
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Santos carried out the vicious murders in less than 30 minutes, District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were strangers to him, and simply happened to be sleeping on Chinatown sidewalks that horrific night,\u201d Bragg said. \u201cTwo additional victims were injured in Santos\u2019s brutal attacks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, he has been held accountable for his crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Defense attorney Lou Freeman said he was happy the jury acquitted his client on a lesser obstruction charge and said he planned to appeal the verdict.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Santos faces life in prison when he is sentenced on April 16.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A deranged maniac who bludgeoned four homeless men to death during a grisly 2019 killing spree in Chinatown…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9098,57,238,9,56,63,65,64,4721,58],"class_list":{"0":"post-139358","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-chinatown","9":"tag-metro","10":"tag-murders","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-ny","13":"tag-nyc","14":"tag-nyc-headlines","15":"tag-nyc-news","16":"tag-trials","17":"tag-us-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139358","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=139358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}