A 17-year-old member of the notorious MS-13 gang was sentenced to 40 years in prison on Friday after pleading guilty to taking part in the death of an innocent teen who was stabbed 153 times in a Maryland park in June 2016.
Juan Gutierrez-Vasquez, who was just 16 years old at the time, agreed to participate in luring a suspected member of a rival gang to park in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
It was there that prosecutors say Christian Villagran Morales, 18, was ambushed by a group of MS-13 gang members.
In May of last year, Vanesa Alvarado, 20, admitted to luring Morales to Malcolm King Park on the night of June 16, 2016, with the promise of a sexual encounter.
Juan Gutierrez-Vasquez, 17, was sentenced to 40 years in prison by a Maryland judge after he pleaded guilty to taking part in the murder of an innocent teen in 2016
Christian Villagran Morales (above), 18, was ambushed by a group of MS-13 gang members after he was lured to a park by a young woman with the promise of a sexual encounter
She then laughed and cheered on the knife-wielding assassins as they slaughtered Morales.
Gutierrez-Vasquez admitted that he held Morales down as he was being stabbed by others, Fox 5 DC reported.
Alvarado, who was born and raised in Montgomery County, Maryland, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.
She was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Alvarado, the mother of two young children, was arrested just two weeks after the brutal murder along with Gutierrez-Vasquez, who also later admitted to his role in the ambush attack, claiming that the victim was a rival gang member.
In May of last year, Vanesa Alvarado (left), 20, was sentenced to 40 years in prison after she pleaded guilty to setting the honey trap. Jose Cuadra-Quintanilla (right), who was also arrested in connection with the murder, awaits trial
Morales was stabbed 153 times at Malcolm King Park in Gaithersburg, Maryland in June 2016
Jose Coreas-Ventura (left) and Oscar Ernesto Delgado-Perez (right) were also arrested in connection with the murder. Delgado-Perez faces charges in an unrelated immigration case while Coreas-Ventura awaits trial
According to prosecutors, however, Morales did not belong to any criminal enterprise, but rather was a hardworking landscaper who had relocated from New Jersey, where his mother lived, to Maryland for work, and who dreamed of eventually moving back to his native Guatemala to start a small farm.
In the months after the man’s stabbing death, police in Montgomery County arrested three other suspects in the murder, among them Jose Coreas-Ventura, Oscar Delgado-Perez and Josue Cuadra-Quintanilla.
Coreas-Ventura and Cuadra-Quintanilla are awaiting trials.
The case against Delgado-Perez was dropped to clear the way for federal prosecutors to bring him up on charges related to immigration violations, to which he has pleaded guilty, reported The Washington Post.
By the time of Morales’ murder, Delgado-Perez had been deported back to his native El Salvador twice, in October 2014 and February 2015, according to federal authorities.
Details of the violent attack on Morales were laid bare in court documents filed as part of Alvarado and Gutierrez-Vasquez’s guilty pleas.
According to the filings, not long before his violent death, the landscaper had a chance encounter with Gutierrez-Vasquez, Cuadra-Quintanilla and Coreas-Ventura at a store where he would usually go to pick up candy or juice after work.
The trio asked the 18-year-old if he belonged to a gang, to which Morales replied that he did but refused to state his gang affiliation.
When asked by the trio of suspected MS-13 gang members to show hand sings for any gangs, according to the documents, the 18-year-old landscaper responded by flashing signs associated with the 18th Street gang, which is a rival of MS-13, an international gang founded in Los Angeles, California, with factions throughout the US as well as Central America.
Following the meeting with Morales, one of the three men called the leader of the local MS-13 gang, who immediately put out a hit on the perceived rival, according to prosecutors.
The gang then allegedly devised a plan in which Alvarado, a high school dropout with a history of heavy drug use who was friends with the local MS-13 gang, and who also knew Morales, would act as a honey trap.
On June 16, 2016, Alvarado texted Morales, saying she wanted to have sex with him and asking him to meet her in the densely wooded Malcolm King Park.
Police said she was in on the murder plot as a ‘known associate of MS-13.’
Four MS-13 members accosted the pair in the Gaithersburg park and asked Morales if he wanted to smoke marijuana before they fell upon him, knives drawn, and proceeded to stab him 153 times.
Despite his small stature, Morales had a powerful built owing to weightlifting, and at first he was able to put up a fight, but eventually he became overwhelmed and pleaded his attackers to spare his life, but to no avail.
According to prosecutors, Alvarado not only witnessed the slaying but egged on the killers and laughed at the victim, and after the murder she led her friends to the scene of the crime to look at Morales’ body.