In a deserted courtroom on Thursday, the absence of voices to advocate for four men brutally murdered by Randy Santos was palpable. These victims, bludgeoned to death with a metal bar as they slept on the streets of New York City, had no one to speak on their behalf.
Florencio Moran, Nazario Vásquez Villegas, Anthony Manson, and Chuen Kok were deprived of the opportunity to have their stories told. No grieving friends or family members came forward to share the impact of their tragically curtailed lives.
No one stood to confront Santos, who was driven by psychosis during his deadly spree through Manhattan’s Chinatown almost seven years ago. Nor was there anyone present to listen to any apology he might offer.
Even as Santos received his sentence of 40 years to life in prison, the courtroom remained silent, devoid of the typical emotional testimonies from victims’ loved ones.
“Today, we lack victim impact statements,” acknowledged Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Alfred Peterson to Judge Laura A. Ward. “There’s no one here to articulate the significance of their lives and the void left by their absence.”
Peterson, his voice occasionally faltering with emotion, assured the court and the city of the inherent value of every life. “We understand the precious gift of life, the choices it affords us, and the free will it grants,” he emphasized. “Randy Santos robbed these men of that gift.”
Santos, convicted in February of first-degree murder, sat solemnly between his court-appointed lawyers, listening through headphones as a Spanish interpreter translated the proceeding. A Chinatown activist who arranged Kok’s funeral watched quietly from the courtroom gallery, a few feet from Santos’ family.
Addressing the court in English, the 31-year-old pleaded for a sentence short enough to allow him to “be somebody” after prison.
He told the judge that his mind — which his lawyers said had deluded him into believing he had to kill 40 people or would die himself — “is much better now” with daily medication. And he promised to use his time in prison to finish school, improve his English and learn a trade.
“I just want to say, I’m very sorry for what I did,” Santos said. “I apologize to the people for what I did. I feel very bad about what I did. I wish it never happened.”
Ward described Santos’ case as the “coming together of three horrible symptoms of this city: homelessness, mental illness and narcotics abuse.” Those, she said, “are the constant in all our violent crime cases.”
Peterson called the case “a study in how the life of a young man can go off track so horribly,” and said Santos “clearly has his own challenges in life, much like the victims.”
Santos’ lawyers argued at trial that his schizophrenia, diagnosed months before the killings, had polluted his mind with irrational thoughts and left him prone to violence. They tried, unsuccessfully, to convince a jury that he was not criminally responsible for the killings and that, instead of prison, he should be sent to a psychiatric treatment facility.
Santos has gone back and forth from jail to psychiatric treatment facilities since his arrest.
“We ask that Mr. Santos not be sentenced to die in prison,” defense lawyer Arnold Levine told Ward, asking for a sentence of 20 years to life behind bars. “He is not incorrigible or beyond redemption or hope.”
Ward said she sympathized with Santos, but that she had a “difficult time getting past the fact that Mr. Santos targeted the most vulnerable people in our society. People who were doing nothing but sleeping on the street, homeless.”
Prosecutors had asked for a sentence of 50 years to life in prison. In addition to the murder charges, Santos was also convicted of attempted murder for assaults that left two other men severely injured.
Before determining the sentence, Ward said she reviewed surveillance video of the attacks. Among other things, the footage showed Santos repeatedly lifting a 4-foot (1.2 meter) bar over his head and bringing it down on the head of one victim.
A couple out on a date on saw Santos beating another man with the same weapon, which he had found on the street, prosecutors said. The lone survivor of the half-hour killing spree, critically injured 49-year-old David Hernandez, staggered to a nearby street where police officers were trying to revive another Santos victim.
Police later found Santos carrying the bar, which was covered with blood and hair. Testing showed it had his DNA on one end and blood from some of his victims on the other, prosecutors said. The victims ranged in age from 39 to 83.
After court officers led Santos out of the courtroom in handcuffs, the Chinatown activist, Karlin Chan, said the sentencing gives the community closure.
“He knew what he was doing,” Chan said, dismissing Santos’ apology as performative. “At the end of the day here, he’s going to a place where he deserves to be: jail.”
