6 charged with kidnapping, slaying 15-year-old
By: Scott McCabe

05/11/09 8:12 PM EDT

Six members of a violent Hispanic street gang were charged with kidnapping and killing a 15-year-old boy as part of a gang ritual, according to Montgomery County police.

The arrests come nearly four months after the body of Dennys Guzman-Saenz was found at the edge of a stream at a Gaithersburg park. Dennys, a freshman at High Point High School in Beltsville, had been stabbed repeatedly, police said.

Police said the suspects were members of a suburban Maryland clique of the 18th Street Gang, a Los Angeles-based gang with connections to drug cartels in Mexico and Colombia.

Members of that gang were driving around Langley Park on Jan. 18, looking to attack members of their rival, MS-13.

Both gangs are based in Los Angeles. The 18th Street Gang has close ties to Mexican and Colombian drug cartels. MS-13 has connections to Central America and has made inroads in the D.C. metro area.

Dennys, who migrated from El Salvador three years ago, had friends and an uncle in MS-13, but was not an official member, police said.

The 18th Street gangsters driving around that day — Joel Ventura-Quintanilla, 22, Ysaud Flores, 30, Ana Abarca, 18, Daniel A. Zavala, 26, and Silvia Martinez, 19 — spotted Dennys at a bus stop by his house in Hyattsville, police said.

Posing as MS-13 members, Ventura-Quintanilla and the others approached Dennys and asked if he also was in that gang, police said.

They then grabbed Dennys and threw him into the car, police said. The gang then drove to Malcolm King Park in Gaithersburg, and called other 18th Street Gang members, including David A. Lozano, 32, to tell them to meet at the park so they could take part in a murder of rival gang member, police said.

Thirty minutes after they arrived at the park, Dennys was killed, police said. His body was found the next day by a man collecting garbage.

Over the past three months, Montgomery County police repeatedly posted notices and photos of Dennys asking for help in finding his killers.

Police recently received an anonymous tip from someone who knew Ventura-Quintanilla by his nickname, Jhony. Detectives had a good description of the culprit to include several missing upper teeth, and specific tattoos on his back and stomach. He was known to be a member of the 18th Street Gang.

Police picked up Ventura-Quintanilla on Thursday, and rounded up the remaining five in Maryland, D.C. and Virginia over the weekend.


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