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NEW YORK — <\/span>A man on trial for bludgeoning four men to death with a metal bar<\/a> as they slept on the New York City streets had been diagnosed with schizophrenia when he left jail months earlier and was hearing voices telling him he needed to kill 40 people or he would die too, his lawyer told jurors on Tuesday.<\/p>\n Randy Santos, 31, is asserting an insanity defense at his trial in state court in Manhattan. Through his lawyers, he has acknowledged committing the 2019 Chinatown rampage. But, they argue, he is not criminally responsible because mental illness has polluted his mind with irrational thoughts<\/a> and left him prone to violence.<\/p>\n If they succeed, Santos could be sent to a psychiatric treatment facility instead of prison.<\/p>\n \u201cHe needed the voices to stop. He needed to save his own life,” Santos\u2019 lawyer, Marnie Zien, said in an opening statement. \u201cHe saw no other way out.\u201d<\/p>\n Santos, 31, has pleaded not guilty to charges including first-degree murder in the deaths of Florencio Moran, Nazario V\u00e1squez Villegas, Anthony Manson and Chuen Kok<\/a> and attempted murder charges for assaults that left two other men severely injured. They were among 319 killings in New York City in 2019, including 52 in Manhattan. <\/p>\n Surveillance video captured Santos \u201crepeatedly lifting the bar up over his head and bringing it down on the head\u201d of one victim, Assistant District Attorney Alfred Peterson told jurors. <\/p>\n A couple out on a date on Manhattan\u2019s Bowery street saw him beating another man with the same weapon, Peterson said. Police 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, the prosecutor said.<\/p>\n If the jury convicts Santos, rejecting his insanity defense, he could be sentenced to life in prison. Otherwise, he could be involuntarily committed to treatment for as long as necessary.<\/p>\n Peterson urged jurors to look past Santos’ mental health claims and find him guilty on all charges, telling them that evidence will show that Santos \u201cknew exactly what he was doing and the consequences of what he was doing \u2014 that he was killing these men,” the prosecutor said.<\/p>\n Santos looked up and down the street and \u201csaw the coast was clear\u201d before starting the attack, Peterson said. He then paused to let a pedestrian \u2014 and potential witness \u2014 leave the area before wailing on another man, Peterson said. He knew \u201cit was legally and morally wrong,\u201d the prosecutor said.<\/p>\n Santos even recognized himself in surveillance video of the attack, Peterson said. Shown the footage after his arrest, he told police: \u201cYea, that\u2019s me.\u201d<\/p>\n Santos, a native of the Dominican Republic who moved to New York as a child, attacked five men between 1:30 a.m. and 2 a.m. on Oct. 5, 2019, bashing their heads repeatedly with a 4-foot (1.2 meter) bar he found on the street, Peterson said. The victims ranged in age from 39 to 83.<\/p>\n The lone survivor, critically injured 49-year-old David Hernandez, staggered to a nearby street where police officers were trying to revive another Santos victim.<\/p>\n Peterson said Santos had done a \u201ctrial run\u201d about a week earlier, badly hurting another man by bashing his head with a wooden stick in a different Manhattan neighborhood.<\/p>\n Santos, who has gone back and forth from jail to psychiatric treatment facilities since his arrest, wore an untucked white button-down shirt and a tie as he sat between his lawyers at the defense table. He listened to Zien\u2019s opening statement through a Spanish interpreter, but moved his headphones off his ear as Peterson spoke.<\/p>\n Prevailing with an insanity defense can be particularly tough in New York. Santos\u2019 lawyers must convince the jury that he didn\u2019t understand the consequences of his actions and didn\u2019t know right from wrong. The strategy has had mixed results.<\/p>\n In 2022, a man who killed a young tourist when he drove his car through crowds of people in Times Square<\/a> was cleared of responsibility and sent to a mental health facility instead of prison after a jury found he was so psychologically disturbed he didn\u2019t know what he was doing.<\/p>\n