MS-13 gang member pleads guilty to killing 7 on Long Island in separate attacks
CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. — MS-13 gang member Jairo Saenz pleaded guilty Tuesday to killing seven people in separate attacks on Long Island.
Prosecutors say Saenz, also known as "Funny," and his older brother Alexi, also known as "Blasty," were gang leaders among 13 defendants charged in multiple barbaric MS-13 murders. Saenz will now join his brother in prison.
Nisa Mickens, Kayla Cuevas murdered by MS-13 gang members
Nisa Mickens, age 15, was slaughtered while walking home from her Brentwood school in September 2016, along with her best friend, 16-year-old Kayla Cuevas. Both girls were murdered with machetes and bats at the hands of a brutal clique of the MS-13 street gang.
Saenz, now 28, admitted in court he signed off on their murders.
"I agreed with other members of MS-13 that they should kill the females," he said in Spanish.
"Why? Why did it happen? Why did you choose my daughter that day?" said Mickens' mothers, Elizabeth Alvarado.
Cuevas' mother, Evelyn Rodriguez, became an anti-gang activist. She appeared at President Donald Trump's State of the Union in 2018. She was fatally struck by a car during a dispute over a memorial for her daughter later that year.
"Why Kayla? Why Nisa? It should have never happened. He's not God. He has no power to take a life, just like that, with no remorse," Alvarado said.
Michael Johnson murdered after being mistaken for rival gang member
Saenz also admitted to luring George Johnson's son Michael into a wooded area, then stabbing and hacking him, thinking he was a rival gang member.
"This kid has no idea what he's done to me," Johnson said. "The holidays get rougher and rougher, when I gotta look at all my other kids that are there. When they're there, that's when I feel it. Because all my kids are there, and he's not there."
In court, Saenz turned, smiling and chuckling when he spotted family members, who left without speaking.
Jairo Saenz will be sentenced in June. His older brother will be sentenced at the end of January. Families had lobbied for life in prison.