Punches, Rages: Before 4 Killings, Suspect Grew Ever More Violent
Randy Santos is accused of going on a murderous rampage in Chinatown following years of erratic behavior.
Randy Rodriguez Santos was unemployed and living in an abandoned building, so in recent weeks he was eager to do odd jobs for the Segarras, a couple who lived next door to his mother in the Bronx.
He cleaned up their yard and replaced railings. The Segarras paid him modestly in cash and offered him sandwiches. Then in late September, Mr. Santos, 24, stopped showing up to work.
That was nothing new, the Segarras said. Mr. Santos had often disappeared and reappeared from the block on East 183rd Street since his arrival in New York City five years ago. This time, however, his behavior was odd.
“He seemed lost,” Lydia Segarra said. “He would forget that he just saw you.”
What happened next rattled the conscience of the city.
Early Saturday morning, Mr. Santos stormed through Chinatown, miles away from the Bronx, swinging a three-foot, 15-pound metal bar at homeless men sleeping on the street, the police said. Mr. Santos is accused of killing four men; a fifth was left barely alive. He has yet to enter a plea to the charges, and his lawyer, Arnold Levine, has declined to comment.
The murderous rampage followed years of erratic and violent behavior, the police said. A year ago, Mr. Santos was arrested on charges that he choked and bit a 55-year-old man at a store in the garment district in Manhattan. A month later, he was accused of punching a man on the Q train.
Then in May, he was accused of exploding in rage and punching a 24-year-old man in a shelter in Brooklyn. The same week, a 19-year-old woman reported to the police he groped her buttocks at a shelter in Jamaica, Queens.
But neither the criminal justice system, nor the city’s network of social services agencies, sounded alarms about Mr. Santos’ potential for violence. He also wiggled out from under the watchful eye of concerned neighbors, who urged him to seek counseling.
Mr. Santos would go into homeless shelters, but he was kicked out at least twice for punching other residents. He was jailed several times, on charges including fare evasion and assault, but was always released.
He was arrested on assault charges six times, and in three recent cases from Brooklyn and Manhattan, charges against him were dropped because the victims stopped cooperating, law enforcement officials said.
Earlier this year, a judge gave him two chances to avoid jail time after he was arrested as he tried to sneak into the subway without paying, requiring him to enroll in social services.
But he never signed up and he also skipped a court date in the groping case, resulting in warrants being issued for his arrest. Police officers picked him up in May, then again in late July, and he landed on Rikers Island.
Then in August, the Bronx Freedom Fund, a charity that provides bail to poor people charged with low-level offenses, put up $1,000 to secure his release.
David Feige, the chairman of the fund, said the nonprofit screens people for its help, and had determined Mr. Santos was eligible because his lawyer had said Mr. Santos was being counseled by a social worker. He could not provide details.
Mr. Santos returned to his mother’s neighborhood, squatting in the abandoned building.
In the days before the killings, neighbors noticed he had become withdrawn and seemed troubled. He told Ms. Segarra’s husband, Segundo, that he was ill and felt “stressed out.” Mr. Segarra urged him to go to the emergency room. But Mr. Santos replied, “They are not going to take care of me," Ms. Segarra said.
The superintendent of his mother’s building, Roberto Guzman, recently offered to take him to a mental health facility. “He said, ‘No, no. I’ll go myself.’ But he never went,” Mr. Guzman recalled.
A week before the killings, investigators believe Mr. Santos attacked a 38-year-old homeless man in an incident that presaged the deadly beatings, the police said. The victim told the police he was sleeping in a park on the riverside near the High Line around 12:50 a.m. when he woke up to a man beating him with a stick. His attacker, who in a security camera video resembled Mr. Santos, then tried to lift the man over a barricade into the water, the chief of detectives, Dermot F. Shea, said.
The quadruple homicide on Saturday, one of the most monstrous crimes in New York’s recent history, has prompted reflection from every angle. Elected leaders and some acquaintances of the murdered men have called for the city to do more for the estimated 3,600 people living on the street.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, a second-term Democrat who ran on a promise to fight poverty and lessen income inequality, has deployed more police officers, mental health providers and homeless outreach workers to the community in Lower Manhattan.
Though the Bowery and Chinatown and other downtown neighborhoods have traditionally been welcoming to the homeless, residents have recently raised concerns with elected officials about an recent influx of younger, mentally ill homeless men who appear to need more intense services.
The killings have made it harder for Mr. de Blasio to win public support from local residents for his plan to open 90 new shelters by 2022, especially those for men. The new shelters are intended to provide better services, including for mental health. His administration has opened only 27 shelters so far, in part, because residents in some neighborhoods have protested or even sued.
On Monday morning, Steven Banks, the commissioner of social services, joined about 100 people at a somber vigil for the men killed in Chinatown. But Monday night, more than 1,000 people filled the auditorium at Christ the King High School in Middle Village, Queens, to hear about the city’s plan to open a shelter for 200 men in Glendale, the neighborhood south of Middle Village.
The few people in support of the shelter were jeered while the crowd erupted into cheers for opponents, including a woman said she did not care about homeless people and that she was afraid of them. “I don’t want them in my back yard. They are a ticking bomb,” she said, adding later, “I hope somebody’s going to burn the place down.”
Mr. Santos’s last known address was a shelter in Brooklyn, according to the police, but it appeared he had not been there for months.
He was from the Dominican Republic, and he arrived in New York about five years ago and moved in with his mother. After about two years, his relationship with his mother soured because of his drug use and irrational behavior, said Eric Tosado, 26, an area barber who met Mr. Santos when he arrived.
“He was totally fine, say, two years ago,” he said. “Then he started changing.”
Mr. Santos’s family “didn’t respect him any more,” Mr. Tosado said.
The barber said he occasionally gave Mr. Santos free haircuts and offered him money to buy a clean shirt and food. “I wanted him to feel good about himself, more positive,” Mr. Tosado said.
Mr. Santos occasionally stayed in an abandoned building on the same block as his mother’s building. More often, however, neighbors saw Mr. Santos sleeping in the stairwell of his mother’s building. His head would be in a corner and his shoeless feet would hang slightly off the steps. People would have to step over him.
Mr. Guzman, the superintendent, once filmed Mr. Santos’s unusual slumber because he wanted the building’s management to understand what was happening. “He wasn’t well mentally,” Mr. Guzman said. “A young man sleeping by the stairs is not normal.”
On Friday, hours before the rampage, residents saw him once again lying in the stairwell.
Candy Santos, 41, who is not a relative, said Mr. Santos was never overly friendly toward her, but he always responded when spoken to. “Friday, he was a different person,” she said. “He wasn’t making eye contact. He was just laying there. There was something in his eyes that felt different.”
“It’s like he wasn’t there,” she said.
Anora Queen, 56, who is homeless and stays in the area near Mr. Santos’s mother’s building, said he was upset over his mother. “He was asking for her attention,” Ms. Queen said. “His mother had kicked him out. He wanted to go back in. But she wouldn’t open the door for him.”
Other neighbors said Mr. Santos’s mother appeared to be scared of her son. Mr. Guzman said he saw them on Friday afternoon outside the building and overheard some of their conversation. Mr. Santos said, “Sorry, Mom, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
His mother handed him $10 and walked away.
Hours later, Mr. Santos was in Chinatown.
Jan Ransom and Ashley Southall contributed to this report.
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