Thread: Life in prison for MS-13 gang member on Long Island

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/ ... -apnewyork

Life in prison for MS-13 gang member on Long Island


January 4, 2007, 3:44 PM EST

CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. (AP) _ A member of the MS-13 street gang, convicted of conspiring to murder a fellow gang member suspected of being a police informant, was sentenced Thursday to life in prison without parole.

Leonel Mejia, 22, of Uniondale, was convicted last April of conspiracy, murder and weapon charges relating to the 2003 murder of 19-year-old Edgardo Sanchez in North Massapequa.

Prosecutors said Sanchez was killed after Mejia and fellow gang members discovered that Sanchez had provided the Nassau County Police Department with information leading to the arrests of six MS-13 members in 2003, on charges of murder and other violent crimes.

U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf said in a statement that the sentence "sends a strong message to those who are willing to murder on behalf of a gang: Do so and you risk spending the rest of your life in prison."

Federal prosecutors are becoming more aggressive in going after members of MS-13, also known as Mara Salvatrucha, a gang made up largely of immigrants from Central America that has an estimated 10,000 members in the United States.

It is considered the largest street gang on Long Island, prosecutors said.

Well its a start, but I don't think American taxpayers should have to pay the bill to house them the rest of their lives. We need as a Nation to send out a signal that this kind of Gang activity will not be tolerated in America. We need legislation making such a crime punishable by death.

The death penalty would be ideal but it takes a long time. Life in prison if they never get out is a good solution as this time as we don't have to worry about him being deported and then returning.

In New York no less. It used to be MS13 was primarily in the southern states. I wonder how many of his fellow gang members Bush will end up giving amnesty to?

Gangs should have been banned in this country years ago but they couldn't come up with a cute slogan to pour a bazillion dollars into like "just say no" so they just went with the untangible, un-winable war on drugs instead.
America seems to be getting good at throwing endless supplies of cash at un-winable situations.

What scares me is that the next gangs that will come to South Florida will be from Brazil. I have been reading about the gang war going on over there right now. If they come here which they probably will they also will end up in northern states as well.