Court docs: 4 found slain were lured to park by female MS-13 associates
CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. -- Prosecutors said in a recent court filing that four young men found slaughtered in a Long Island park last April were lured to the site by two female associates of the MS-13 street gang, whose members were hunting for rivals and perceived enemies.
Once there, the youths -- some still in high school -- were surrounded by more than a dozen gang members who attacked them with machetes, knives and wooden clubs "in a horrific frenzy of violence," according to the court papers obtained by Newsday.
A fifth young man who had accompanied the victims to the park ran for his life and escaped, the court memorandum said.
New York authorities announced Wednesday that at least 15 people have been arrested in connection with murders committed by the MS-13 street gang in Long Island's suburbs. Suffolk County's police commissioner says the defendants in custody include six juveniles who participated in deadly attacks, including the massacre of the four young men.
Some of those arrested are charged in a gang assassination at a Long Island deli in January. Two others are charged with the attempted murder of two people they believed to be gang rivals in October 2015, the statement said.
Federal prosecutors and county police announced the charges at a joint news conference Wednesday in Central Islip.
The April massacre in Central Islip was part of a string of Long Island killings blamed on MS-13, a deadly gang with origins in Central America. The deaths have attracted international attention and led to Congressional hearings, tweets from the White House and a visit to Long Island from the U.S. attorney general.
Suffolk County police commissioner Timothy Sini called the massacre "one of the worst crimes committed in Suffolk County history" and hailed the indictments as "another huge blow against MS-13."
"The acts of these defendants are unspeakable," Sini said.
In a letter to the court, obtained by Newsday, federal prosecutors said the four victims found dead in April, plus the person who escaped, "were marked for death merely because they were suspected of disrespecting the MS-13 and being rival gang members."
The two female gang associates had been instructed to get the victims to a community park, prosecutors wrote.
"When the females got to the park, they led the five individuals to a wooded area ... and sent a text message of their location to several of the MS-13 members," the memorandum said.
Those named in the indictment include Alexis Hernandez, 20, Santis Leonel Ortiz-Flores, 19, and Omar Antonio Villalta, 22, for allegedly helping to carry out the deadly April attack. The three allegedly "met in a heavily wooded area behind the park where they discussed the plan to kill the victims, distributed weapons and waited for word from the females that they had arrived," prosecutors said in a statement.
The victims killed in the ensuing attack included Justin Llivicura, 16, of East Patchogue; Jorge Tigre, 18, of Bellport; Michael Lopez Banegas, 20, of Brentwood; and Jefferson Villalobos, 18, of Pompano Beach, Florida, who was on Long Island visiting his cousin Banegas at the time.
Gang members and associates then allegedly dragged the four bodies a short distance to "a more secluded spot" and fled.
The victims' families have denied that any of the men were in a gang.
The three suspects identified in the killings were charged with racketeering, conspiracy to murder rival gang members and four counts of murder. Attorneys for Ortiz-Flores and Hernandez declined to comment; the name of Villalta's attorney was not immediately available.
MS-13, also called Mara Salvatrucha, is believed to have been founded as a neighborhood street gang in Los Angeles in the mid-1980s by immigrants fleeing a civil war in El Salvador. The gang is now a major international criminal enterprise, with tens of thousands of members in several Central American countries and many U.S. states.
