A hit man doing life after he mistakenly killed a 14-year-old Queens boy playing with a yo-yo instead of his targets lost his latest bid to get compassionate release from federal prison.
Manuel Santos, 65, who’s been behind bars for 23 years, unsuccessfully argued that his sentence was “unusually long” after he killed two innocent people in 2000 in a botched attempt to rub out two men who robbed a drug dealer.
Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Allyne Ross shot down his latest motion earlier this month — his fifth such attempt to get his sentenced reduced under the bipartisan First Step Act signed into law in 2018.
Ross, who rejected all five of his motions for a reduced sentence, wrote in September 2022 that “Mr. Santos’s crime was especially severe, and a life sentence reflects the seriousness of his offense, regardless of the average sentence for a ‘similar’ crime.”
On Sept. 17 this year, she repeated that line, writing, “Mr. Santos has not demonstrated that extraordinary and compelling reasons to justify compassionate release in this case.” She rejected a motion to reconsider her decision on Oct. 4, and Santos has indicated he’ll appeal her ruling.
Santos was convicted at a 2004 trial of murder-for-hire after he and an accomplice, Alex Core, gunned down 14-year-old Edgardo Bryan and his mother’s boyfriend, Wilbur Garces, as they left a parking lot at 101st St. and Park Lane South in Richmond Hill on Sept. 26, 2000.
Santos and Core were hired by drug dealer German Polanco to snuff out two other men, who they knew as “Ronnie” and “El Renco” in exchange for $7,500 a body.
Polanco, who was sentenced to life after his conviction in 2010, believed the two targets had robbed one of his stash houses of $310,000, according to court documents.
Santos and Core joined a third man, Carlos Medina, for a day-long stakeout in a parking lot in front of the house where they though their targets were holed up. When Edgardo and Garces left the house and hopped into a car, they mistook the duo for their targets.
The teen was clutching a red plastic yo-yo when Santos blasted bullet after bullet into the victims’ small car. Core’s gun jammed, according to trial testimony. He was killed in a separate incident a month later.
Medina, who pleaded guilty to the two murders, testified for the government at Santos’ trial.
Police linked the ballistic evidence from the crime scene to the same 10 mm gun that killed another man, Mahase Lall, in May 1999. Santos was the triggerman in that slaying as well.
According to trial testimony, he brought that gun into a Brooklyn bar and drew it during an argument, though it’s unclear if he fired intentionally when he let loose a bullet that ended Lall’s life. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter in state court in exchange for 10 years behind bars.
In his most recent motions, Santos said that he’s been trying to take programs to rehabilitate himself in his medium-security prison in upstate Otisville, and is mentoring younger inmates. But his life sentence means he doesn’t have access to the kind of services available to people serving shorter stints behind bars.
The judge commended Santos for his volunteer efforts, but reiterated that “a reduction will not adequately reflect the seriousness of defendant’s offenses, deter similar criminal conduct, or protect the public.”
