A young member of the Hispanic gang MS-13 was found guilty Monday by a federal jury in New York State of participating in a 2017 quadruple murder, by luring the victims, members of a rival gang, into a violent ambush.
Leniz Escobar, alias “La Diablita”, 17 years old at the time of the events, was also found guilty of extortion and obstruction of justice, and faces life imprisonment. His sentence will be pronounced later by the federal court of Central Islip, on Long Island in the great eastern suburbs of New York, where a large community of El Salvador lives.
The case illustrates in the eyes of the authorities the violence of this gang, Mara Salvatrucha (“the Salvadoran gang”, or MS-13), formed in Los Angeles in the mid-1980s by Salvadoran immigrants before being exported to Central America and in other parts of the United States.
On April 11, 2017, just five years ago, Leniz Escobar, who was acting with an accomplice, lured five young people she thought belonged to a rival gang to a park in Islip, where more than a dozen were waiting for them. members of MS-13 armed with machetes, knives, an ax and other weapons. One of the victims managed to escape, but the other four were beaten to death.
According to the prosecutor, Breon Peace, Leniz Escobar “exhibited complete disregard for human life by leading the victims through a battlefield, until their slaughter, to reinforce his stature with his fellow bloodthirsty murderers- cold within the MS-13 gang”.
“One of the victims was so disfigured that she was only identifiable by her dental impressions,” he added.
For years, US authorities have faced violence from gangs like MS-13. Since 2010, the district attorney’s office has secured indictments from members of this gang, divided into local sections, for “more than 60 murders in the Eastern District of New York”, he recalled Monday.
During his tenure, former US President Donald Trump made MS-13 one of his arguments to link illegal immigration and crime, and thus justify the construction of a wall on the border with Mexico.
In particular, he went in July 2017 to Brentwood, a neighboring town of Central Islip, where the MS-13 was accused of having killed at least 17 people in one year.
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