Three high-ranking members of the MS-13 road gang have pleaded responsible to their roles in 9 killings involving machetes and weapons within the New York Metropolis suburbs, federal prosecutors stated.
Kevin Torres pleaded responsible Friday in federal court docket in Central Islip to racketeering costs for his function within the killings, which occurred throughout a violent interval for the transnational gang in New York from 2016 to 2017.
The 29-year-old Freeport resident was the New York regional chief of the Sailors Locos Salvatruchas Westside, a Lengthy Island-based clique of MS-13, in response to the U.S. Lawyer’s workplace for the Jap District of New York.
David Sosa-Guevara, 33, and Victor Lopez-Morales, 36, each of Roosevelt, entered responsible pleas Thursday in Central Islip court docket. Prosecutors say Sosa-Guevara was the New York chief of the Hollywood Locos Salvatruchas, one other MS-13 clique that operated on Lengthy Island, and Lopez-Morales had been a high-ranking member.
Prosecutors say lots of their victims had been suspected members of rival gangs who had been hacked to loss of life with machetes and different weapons in secluded parks and wooded areas. Lots of the our bodies had been dumped in shallow graves and weren’t found till months and years later.
Amongst them was the 2016 murders on Lengthy Island of Samuel Martinez-Sandoval, Oscar Acosta, Kerin Pineda, Josue Amaya-Leonor, Marcus Bohannon, Javier Castillo and Carlos Ventura-Zelaya. The 2017 murders included the deaths of Angel Soler, additionally on Lengthy Island, and David Rivera in Maryland.
Central American gang MS-13 has terrorized elements of Lengthy Island for years, and now one of many gang’s former kingpins has confessed to brutal crimes. Jairo Saenz pleaded responsible to participating in seven murders, together with the killings of youth ladies Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens. NBC New York’s Pei-Sze Cheng experiences.
Prosecutors say the three admitted to committing the killings to spice up their standing within the gang and to additional its mission. MS-13 is often known as Mara Salvatrucha and is believed to have been based as a neighborhood road gang in Los Angeles within the mid-Nineteen Eighties by individuals fleeing civil battle in El Salvador.
“These defendants carried out vicious and senseless violence to instill fear and assert their dominance,” Nassau County District Lawyer Anne Donnelly stated in a press release with different regional regulation enforcement officers saying the pleas Friday. “Today’s guilty pleas bring us one step closer to ridding this dangerous gang activity from Nassau County communities.”
They every face a minimal of 40 years in jail underneath the phrases of their plea agreements, with Sosa-Guevara and Torres dealing with as much as 65 years in jail and Lopez-Morales dealing with a most of 60 years, in response to prosecutors.
Earlier this week, Jairo Saenz, a high-ranking member of one other MS-13 clique, pleaded responsible to his function in seven murders, together with the killings of Acosta and Castillo, in addition to the deaths of two highschool ladies that targeted the nation’s consideration on the violent gang.
