There was no one in the courtroom on Thursday to speak on behalf of the four men Randy Santos bludgeoned to death with a metal bar as they slept on New York City’s Chinatown streets.
No anguished friends or relatives to tell the judge about Chuen Kok, Florencio Moran, Nazario Vasquez Villegas and Anthony Manson’s abruptly shortened lives. No one to confront Santos face-to-face about his psychosis-fuelled rampage through Manhattan’s Chinatown neighbourhood nearly seven years ago, or to hear him apologise.
No one to see him sentenced to 40 years to life in prison.
Eighty-three-year-old Kok, – the oldest victim and an immigrant from Hong Kong – was a former restaurant worker who had lost his bearings after his wife died and his church closed.
Manson, 49, helped establish a Pentecostal church in Mississippi years ago and later made videos and blogged about his thoughts on Scripture, psychology and societal issues.
Vasquez Villegas, 55, was a factory worker whose family said he had a home on Staten Island and just apparently fell asleep in Chinatown, where he liked to pass the time with friends.
