Suspected gang member gets life for burglary

Jurors in the case learns of grisly Honduras murders

By DALE LEZON Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle
April 6, 2009, 10:40PM


A suspected murderer from Honduras was sentenced on Monday to life in prison for burglarizing a southwest Houston apartment.

Albin Adalin Zelaya-Zelaya, 29, a suspected MS-13 gang member, was also fined $10,000, according to Harris County Assistant District Attorney Donna Hawkins.

Zelaya-Zelaya, convicted last week for buglary of a habitation, declined to testify Monday during the punishment phase of his trial before state District Judge Debbie Mantooth Stricklin.

A 10-year-old and his 18-year old sister, however, told jurors that Zelaya-Zelaya was one of two men who hacked their parents to death in their Honduras home on Christmas Day in 2006.

Prosecutors said Zelaya-Zelaya fled to the United States after the ax killings. He was arrested in January 2007 at an apartment in the 10100 block of South Gessner on assault and immigration charges. Officials said Zelaya-Zelaya had been in Honduras at the time of the killings because he evaded arrest in September 2006 after he reportedly tried to rob illegal immigrants in Houston and survived a shootout with federal law enforcement agents trying foil the robbery.

In Honduras, he allegedly killed his former wife’s parents.

The couple’s son, who was about 6 at the time, testified Monday that Zelaya-Zelaya hit him twice with an ax before the killings. The boy’s sister testified that Zelaya-Zelaya said she would be killed if she told anyone that he killed her mother and father.

She cried Monday as she testified that after the slayings, she saw her father’s body with a large, curving ax wound in his face and her mother’s body with several ax wounds in the back of her head.

When asked by his court-appointed attorney if he wanted to testify, Zelaya-Zelaya said through an interpreter that he didn’t know anything.
Police say that Zelaya-Zelaya’s group may be responsible for a string of local crimes, including at least four kidnapping cases that targeted illegal immigrants or their smugglers.

According to Interpol, Zelaya-Zelaya also is wanted for questioning about a December 2004 attack on a bus in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, that killed 37 people, authorities said.

Though MS-13 operates in several major cities throughout the country, Houston police say they are loosely organized and transient.

dale.lezon@chron.com

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hea ... 61175.html