CHINATOWN, NY — The man arrested in connection with a horrific series of attacks that left four homeless men dead and a fifth critically injured was formally charged Sunday. Rodriguez “Randy” Santos was arrested Saturday morning near the scene of one of the attacks.

Santos, who spent Saturday night at Bellevue Hospital undergoing a psychiatric evaluation, was brought to court early Sunday morning.

He did not enter a plea to four counts of murder, one count of attempted murder and criminal possession of marijuana.

Police say they arrived at 2 Bowery just before 2 a.m. on Saturday where they found one man dead and another badly injured. That was followed by the discovery of two other dead men at 2 East Broadway.

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A fifth man was then found by 17 East Broadway. He had also been killed.

The man who survived the attack is at New York-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital in critical condition. Police said all five men had been sleeping when attacked.

One of the attacks was captured on the surveillance camera of a nearby business. After being brought to the Fifth Precinct, Santos told officers he was the man on the tape.

Officials said the 24-year-old Santos, who is also homeless, is believed to have picked his victims at random. Police recovered a bloody metal pole they think Santos got from a nearby construction site.

Prosecutors said when Santos was arrested, he had a metal pole covered with blood and hair slung over his shoulder.

Santos, who arrived in New York from the Dominican Republic four years ago, has had a series of run-ins with the law. He has more than a dozen arrests, including an arrest for assault in May, officials say.

A men’s shelter in East Flatbush had called police after Santos allegedly beat up another resident. While charges against Santos were eventually dropped, he was kicked out of the shelter.

Before that, he was arrested twice in November. He was charged with punching a fellow straphanger on the Q train and separately charged with biting a worker at a SRO in Hell’s Kitchen.

Giselle Routhier, the policy director at the Coalition for the Homeless, said the attack was “unfathomable in its brutality.”

“Four men lost their lives and one is fighting to survive. It should serve as a reminder to all of us that our homeless neighbors live without the protection and privacy of a home,” Routhier said in a statement. “They are our fellow human beings and deserve the dignity and safety that a home assures. New York City and New York State must build enough deeply subsidized housing for homeless New Yorkers to match the scale of the need in order to prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again.”

After the victims were discoverd, Mayor Bill de Blasio on Twitter called the attacks “a senseless act of violence against the most vulnerable members of our community. It flies in the face of the values of our city. We’re keeping the victims and their loved ones in our hearts today.”

Police are asking anyone with information about the crimes to contact the tips hotline at 800-577-TIPS.

Patch’s Colin Miner contributed reporting to this story.