Police investigate at the scene of the killing of homeless men in New York on October 5, 2019.
REUTERS/Lloyd Mitchell
Police charged a 24-year-old man Sunday with murder for allegedly using a metal pipe to beat four fellow homeless men to death as they slept. Randy Rodriguez Santos was charged with four counts of murder, one count of attempted murder, and one count of unlawful possession of marijuana a day after he was taken into custody following the attack in Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood.
Police detailed Sunday that they were first alerted to the assault on a homeless man close to 2 a.m. on Saturday. They found a man lying in the street with severe head trauma, and another man approached them with head trauma. The officers then canvassed the area and found three other victims. Four men were pronounced dead at the scene and a fifth man was taken to the hospital in critical condition. Police found Santos carrying a metal pipe near the scene of the assaults and he was taken into a custody. A disturbing surveillance video that appears to have captured one of the attacks was posted on YouTube by the World Journal, the largest Chinese language paper in the United States.
Investigators said Santos was also homeless and the attack for now appeared to be random. “The motive appears to be, right now, just random attacks,” said Michael Baldassano, the chief of Manhattan South Detectives. “No one was targeted by race, age, anything of that nature.”
The New York Daily News tracked down the suspect’s mother, Fioraliza Rodriguez, who said she kicked her son out of the house three years ago, saying he had problems with drugs and had assaulted her and his grandfather. “I never thought he would kill someone,” she said. “I was afraid of him, though, because he punched me. That’s when I told him to get out of my house.”
The attack put a spotlight on the way New York’s homeless population has been on the rise despite the city’s steady economic growth. Although Mayor Bill de Blasio vowed to launch new efforts to get people off the streets, he has struggled to contain the increase in homelessness. After the murders, the mayor’s office vowed to “dedicate more resources to prevent similar tragedies in the future.” On Twitter, De Blasio said he’s “stunned and horrified by this senseless act of violence against the most vulnerable members of our community.”
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