From the New York Post:
4 homeless men found murdered in Chinatown, suspect in custody
Four homeless men were found beaten to death in Chinatown early Saturday and a fifth was critically injured in a terrifying Lower Manhattan rampage, police said.
Sources identified the alleged killer to The Post as Rodriguez “Randy” Santos, who has 14 past arrests — including an assault charge from May.
The homicidal spree came to light as cops responded to a 911 call of an assault in progress on Bowery Street near Doyers Street in Chinatown at about 1:50 a.m. and found two homeless men with head trauma, cops said.
This is a serial killing.
Maniac that bludgeoned sleeping Chinatown vagrants has history of violence
A homeless maniac bludgeoned four other vagrants to death as they slept on the sidewalks of Chinatown early Saturday — bashing in their skulls one by one with a scavenged metal bar during a senseless predawn murder spree.
Rodriguez “Randy” Santos is just 24, but already had what cops call a history of violent, random attacks when he allegedly approached his first victims, two men sprawled asleep side by side on cardboard bedding at Bowery and Doyers Street just before 2 a.m.
“They were sleeping. They never saw it coming,” one shocked police source told The Post.
After smashing the pair in the heads with the 15-pound, 3-foot-long piece of metal, Santos left the two men for dead and stalked for more victims, police said.
Santos was being held Saturday night in the Fifth Precinct pending his arraignment; he faces multiple murder and assault charges.
He had been acting “not 100% there” in his holding cell, a source said — including exposing himself.
“He’s doing things that would get him arrested if he was doing them in the subway,” the source noted.
So we have a deranged vagrant going on a murder spree. It seems that he targeted homeless men because they were sleeping in public.
Given the list of other crimes he has committed (listed in the article), he has been a threat to the public for a long time.
It was simply ease and opportunity that caused him to attack other homeless this time, it could have been anyone that presented an easy target, homeless or not.
Do not make yourself an easy target.
“If you look like prey, you will be preyed upon”
Saying Do not make yourself an easy target. is really rough to do if you’re sleeping on the street. It’s hard enough to do if you’re sleeping in a McMansion in a nice comfy bed.
If those people sleeping in the streets had a gun on them, without some way to alert them the maniac is coming they’d be just as dead.
True, I’m not doubting that. Maybe I should have been more explicit. Growing up in Miami I have watched people fall asleep on the beach. I’ve seen people lay out a blanket and doze in Central Park and the National Mall. The internet is filled with people who fell asleep on the NY Subway.
You don’t need to be a homeless person to zonk out in a public place. You don’t even need to fall asleep. Nose down in a phone, ear buds in, watching some movie on an app is as good a zonked out.
Sad to say, but if the homeless victims did have a firearm, they would have sold or traded it for the recreational mind altering substance of choice.