Leader of MS-13 and 22 gang members are indicted for multiple murders

Nearly two dozen members of the notorious street gang MS-13 were rounded up and charged by the FBI in relation to a long-running Long Island turf dispute on Wednesday.

Among those named in the indictment is Edenilson Velasquez Larin, aka Agresor, 33, of Thornton, Colorado, the purported national leader of the gang. 

Despite the violence being centered around New York, alleged members from New Jersey, North Carolina and Virginia were arrested this week. Larin is being held in immigration custody in Ohio. 

The MS-13 gang has become known for violence across the US and been connected to high-profile crimes in Florida, Texas, New York and a host of other locations.  

The group is charged with one particularly heinous act of violence when members killed a 17-year-old boy after stabbing and strangling him before posing for photos with his body.  

MS-13 gang member now looking a life in prison after pleading guilty the murders of three men, including an 18-year-old who was lured to a New York baseball field to smoke marijuana and beat with him a bat and stabbed

Oscar Solis Jr., who is charged with killing an Uber Eats driver during a delivery, Wednesday, April 19, 2023, at Solis’ home in Holiday, Florida. he is an accused member of the MS-13 gang

In the summer of 2021, the gang found itself at war with the Latin Kings gang over territory in Nassau County, New York. One of those charges, Christian Alas Leon, is accused of leading an attack on a rival gang member with machetes. 

In the wake of a retaliatory stabbing for that attack, members of the MS-13 Long Island faction Fulton Locos Salvatruchas, held a conference call with Larin from a park in Hicksville, New York. At the meeting, the gangbangers devised a plot to kill a Latin Kings member, authorities allege. 

The target of that attack survived despite being shot by Erick Galdamez Leon aka Truco, 23, prosecutors say in a press release. 

Another man was targeted by the group after he uploaded a video to social media showing him in Westbury, Long Island, considered MS-13 territory. He also survived when he was shot in the face by group members Carlos Alvarado, 19, and Tylor Salmeron, 20, authorities said Wednesday.

The group was also at war with the Los Angeles based 18th Street Gang during 2019 and 2020 over turf in Long Island. This resulted in several shooting incidents, officials said. The accused leader of that battle was Jose Espinoza Sanchez.

Between 2018 and 2020, MS-13 members were responsible to four murders in the Queens section of New York City, prosecutors say. 

In 2019, the group allegedly shot dead another man after dragging him off of a subway train in Jackson Heights, Queens, while yelling: ‘We’re MS-13! We’re going to kill him!’

The slaying began as a fight between two groups on a Manhattan-bound 7 train. The victim was a member of the Latin King. He was later named as Abel Mosso. 

Police officers in El Savador search a young man at the 22 de Abril community in the Soyapango district which is controlled by the Mara Salvatrucha – MS13 gang

Graphic footage showed the three men fighting on the platform at the 90th Street-Elmhurst Avenue subway stop after the train doors opened at about 1pm Sunday.

The victim was punched multiple times before one of the men, dressed in a gray jacket, stood up and pulled out a gun.

He shot Mosso in the head and the footage shows him dropping to the ground.

An additional five gunshots were fired before the two men fled the scene.

Terrified commuters, who had tried to intervene to break the fight up, were filmed screaming as they ran away from the gunfire.

Police said the train and platform were crowded when the gunfire rang out.

The victim died at the scene after suffering multiple gunshot wounds, including one to the head.

‘The murders and other crimes of violence allegedly committed by these defendants were brutal, coldblooded and utterly senseless,’ United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Breon Peace said when announcing the arrests. 

‘This office and our law enforcement partners are working tirelessly to dismantle the MS-13 at all of its levels, and we will not relent until this transnational criminal organization, it’s leaders, members and associates are held accountable for the extreme violence. … They have perpetrated in our communities,’ he added.

In the same press release, Michael Driscoll, FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge accused MS-13 of bringing ‘fear and terror to our communities.’ 

‘The indictments today mark another success in our fight against the continued threat posed by MS-13. The FBI Long Island Gang Task Force and our law enforcement partners are determined to eliminate the scourge of violence and criminal behavior brought by MS-13,’ Driscoll also said. 

According to that press release, since 2003, the Eastern District of New York has has successfully prosecuted hundreds of MS-13 members.  

Two others named in the indictment, Jose Mejia Hernandez, 21, and Yonathan Hernandez, 24, are named as major drug traffickers. They also face money laundering charges. 

The Long Island-based alleged members of the gang were arraigned in a Brooklyn court on Wednesday. 

The arrival of inmates belonging to the MS-13 and 18 gangs to the new prison ‘Terrorist Confinement Centre’. A riot at a Honduras prison this week left 46 dead and was spurred by alleged gang violence

MS-13, also known as La Mara Salvatrucha, recruits young teenagers from El Salvador and Honduras, though many gang members were born in the U.S.

The announcement of the arrests come on the same day that a prison riot in Honduras that was linked to MS-13 activities killed at least 40 people. 

MS-13, also known as La Mara Salvatrucha, recruits young teenagers from El Salvador and Honduras, though many gang members were born in the U.S. The gang has been blamed for dozens of killings since January 2016 across a wide swath of Long Island.

The gang’s influence and violence on Long Island has waned in recent years amid a federal crackdown.

Former President Donald Trump made rooting out MS-13 a focus of his administration and visited Long Island several times to meet with law enforcement officials and the families of the gang’s victims.

MS-13 is suspected of forging alliances with Mexican cartels and engaging in narcotics trafficking; immigrant smuggling and extortion; kidnappings; and weapons trafficking.