22 Los Angeles-Based MS-13 Gang Members Charged In Series Of Grisly Murders

U.S.

22 Los Angeles-Based MS-13 Gang Members Charged In Series Of Grisly Murders

July 16, 2019

LOS ANGELES – An investigation by federal and local authorities has resulted in a federal racketeering case that charges 22 people linked to the MS-13 transnational gang, most of whom allegedly participated in a series of murders, including several slayings in which victims were hacked to death with machetes in the Angeles National Forest.
A 12-count indictment unsealed Monday afternoon alleges that members and associates of the gang murdered seven people over the last two years. The indictment charges gang leaders who allegedly authorized and coordinated the murders. Also charged are gang members who allegedly murdered and attempted to murder rival gang members, those who were perceived to be cooperating with law enforcement, and, in one instance, a homeless man who was temporarily living in a park controlled by the gang.

The indictment focuses on a particularly violent subset of the gang known as the Fulton clique, which operates in the San Fernando Valley and has recently seen an influx of young immigrants from Central America. Under the influence of these young gangsters, younger associates who wanted to become members of MS-13 were “required to kill an MS-13 rival or someone perceived to be adverse to MS-13 to be initiated into MS-13,” according to the indictment.
In one murder detailed in the indictment, several MS-13 members allegedly targeted a rival gang member who was believed to have defaced MS-13 graffiti. On March 6, 2017, according to the indictment, the rival gang member was abducted, choked, and driven to a remote location in the Angeles National Forest, where six people attacked him with a machete. The victim was dismembered, and his body parts were thrown into a canyon after one of the defendants allegedly cut the heart out of the victim’s body.
The federal RICO case – which was unsealed Monday during arraignments for three defendants who were taken into custody over the past several days in the Los Angeles area – is the product of an investigation by the Los Angeles Metropolitan Task Force on Violent Gangs, which is made up of special agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, officers with the Los Angeles Police Department, and deputies with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. A fourth defendant was arrested over the weekend in Oklahoma.
Over the past year, the other 18 defendants named in the indictment were taken into custody, some on state charges and some on federal charges previously filed. The superseding indictment announced today, which was returned by a federal grand jury on July 9, adds 15 defendants to an indictment filed in March.
“We have now taken off the streets nearly two dozen people associated with the most violent arm of MS-13 in Los Angeles, where the gang is believed to have killed 24 people over the past two years,” said United States Attorney Nick Hanna. “This investigation has been an unqualified success. The collaborative law enforcement effort solved several murder cases and dealt a severe blow to members of the gang who engaged in acts of brutality not seen in the region for over 20 years. The prosecution of these defendants would not have been possible without the backing of local law enforcement, including District Attorney Jackie Lacey, who has supported our efforts every step of the way and has dedicated substantial resources to ensure that all of these defendants get the justice they deserve.”
“Taking violent offenders off the street should send a message to MS-13 members and their associates that medieval-style violence and senseless murder will not be tolerated in Los Angeles,” said Paul Delacourt, the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office. “Working with our local partners, we expect to impact MS-13’s influence in gang-occupied communities.”
“The greatest tragedy in these cases is that these young victims likely left their homelands hopeful that in the United States they would find safety and prosperity,” Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey said. “Instead, these victims had the misfortune of crossing paths with violent gang members who preyed on the vulnerabilities of their immigrant experience. My office will vigorously prosecute these defendants and continue to work with other agencies to enhance public safety in the communities where MS-13 and other brutal gangs operate.”
“Today’s charges are the product of diligent work and a steadfast resolve that we will not let violent criminals continue to victimize our residents,” said Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore. “It can only be accomplished through the shared vision of our state, local, and federal law enforcement partners.”
“The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is always willing to work with our local, state and federal law enforcement counterparts to ensure public safety,” said Sheriff Alex Villanueva.
The 78-page indictment charges all but one of the 22 defendants with conspiring to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. The RICO charge alleges nearly 200 “overt acts,” beginning with the transportation of $1.22 million in narcotics proceeds that were seized in Nebraska in 2010. As part of the RICO conspiracy, members of the gang allegedly committed murders in 2014 and 2015, the second of which is part of a previous racketeering case against the leadership of MS-13 in Los Angeles.
The majority of the conduct outlined in the indictment – including seven murders – started in 2017 and continued into this year. While the indictment focuses on murders committed to increase the gang’s membership, expand the gang’s power and intimidate outsiders, the RICO charge also alleges drug-trafficking activities, including the sale of narcotics to the Fulton clique in Maryland.
In addition to the conspiracy charge, the indictment contains four counts of first-degree murder related to machete, knife and baseball bat killings in the Angeles National Forest, which is within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States. Those four murders – along with a fifth that occurred in the Malibu hills and a sixth in that was committed in the Fulton clique’s stronghold of Whitsett Fields Park in North Hollywood – are also charged as violent crimes committed in aid of racketeering (VICAR), and those six counts allege that the victims were killed “for the purpose of gaining entry to and maintaining and increasing position in MS-13 Los Angeles.”
The indictment also contains allegations that the six VICAR murders were committed “in an especially heinous, cruel, or depraved manner in that [they] involved torture or serious physical abuse to the victim.” The 16 defendants charged in relation to those six murders are eligible for the federal death penalty, although the government has not indicated whether it will seek such a sentence for any of the defendants if they are convicted.
In addition to the RICO case announced today, there are two under-seal cases pending against juvenile defendants in United States District Court.
In 2017, as the result of another investigation by the Los Angeles Metropolitan Task Force on Violent Gangs, a federal grand jury issued a RICO indictment that targeted MS-13’s leadership across the Los Angeles region. That indictment, which alleged three murders attributed to the Fulton clique, charged 34 defendants, 14 of whom have pleaded guilty. Nineteen of the defendants are currently scheduled for trial on September 24. One defendant in that case – Sergio Alexander Galindo, also known as “Killer” – remains a fugitive.

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Politics

22 MS-13 Members Charged In Murders Of Seven People Hacked With Machetes

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REUTERS/Jose Cabezas
https://www.alipac.us/files/images/DCNF-large.jpg Chuck Ross Investigative Reporter
July 16, 201910:46 PM ET

The Justice Department charged 22 alleged members of MS-13 in connection with seven murders in the Los Angeles area, including one in which a rival gang member was dismembered with a machete.
The indictment, which was unsealed Monday, focused on members of a Los Angeles-area subset of MS-13 known as the Fulton clique. Prosecutors called the San Fernando Valley-based gang a “particularly violent subset” of MS-13 that “has recently seen an influx of young immigrants from Central America.”

The Trump administration has made MS-13 a major focus of his crackdown on illegal immigration and drug trafficking. The notoriously violent gang originated in El Salvador, but has strongholds in numerous American cities. (RELATED: Trump Asks Crowd How They Should Refer To MS-13 — They Shout Back ‘Animals!’)
Nick Hanna, the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, said that the Fulton clique was responsible for 24 murders overall in the Los Angeles area over the past two years. Thirty-four members of the gang were indicted in 2017 in connection with three slayings.
The latest indictment charges the 22 alleged gang members under Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute. In addition to seven murders, they are accused of attempted murder and trafficking more than $1.2 million in drugs.

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A member of the National Civil Police elite forces secures an alleged member of the MS-13 gang during a raid in the San Rafael community, in Santa Tecla, 12km east from San Salvador, early in the morning on January 31st, 2008. (Jose CABEZAS/AFP/Getty Images)

The indictment alleges gang leaders authorized and coordinated the murders of rival gang members, people who were believed to be working with law enforcement, and one homeless man who lived in a park in Hollywood controlled by the gang.

The murders were carried out “in an especially heinous, cruel, or depraved manner in that [they] involved torture or serious physical abuse to the victim,” the Justice Department said in a press release.
Many of the murders were carried out by recruits who were required to kill rival gang members in order to join MS-13.
The indictment describes one grisly murder in which a rival gang member was kidnapped and taken to Angeles National Forest. He was allegedly attacked and killed by six MS-13 members wielding machetes.
“The victim was dismembered, and his body parts were thrown into a canyon after one of the defendants allegedly cut the heart out of the victim’s body,” prosecutors said.

“We have now taken off the streets nearly two dozen people associated with the most violent arm of MS-13 in Los Angeles, where the gang is believed to have killed 24 people over the past two years,” Hanna, the U.S. attorney, said in a statement.
“This investigation has been an unqualified success. The collaborative law enforcement effort solved several murder cases and dealt a severe blow to members of the gang who engaged in acts of brutality not seen in the region for over 20 years.”

https://dailycaller.com/2019/07/16/m...edium=facebook

The whole family tree is in our jails!

Mothers, father, aunts, uncles, brother, sisters!

They are the "families" Pelosi wants to pour over our border and their children!

They are not innocent people who wish to do us no harm! They are all related, they come here pregnant with more of these gang babies who grow up to join gangs and push drugs!!!

Shut that whole border down. This is outrages!

They are not vetted, we do not know who these people are! We have 25 million to deport. Stop bringing more into our country!

https://scontent-mia3-2.xx.fbcdn.net...4f&oe=5DBFD9DE

Sebastian Gorka

Remember when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi talked about the ”spark of divinity” in their soul?‬ ‪https://www.dailywire.com/…/cut-heart-out-victims-body-19-i…

https://external-mia3-2.xx.fbcdn.net...BsNHEyZGozIKG5

dailywire.com

‘Cut Heart Out Of Victim’s Body’: 19 Illegal MS-13 Gangsters Charged With Racketeering, Many Charged With Murders

https://external-mia3-2.xx.fbcdn.net...A2Dy15k872ECBS

latimes.com

Wielding machetes and baseball bats, MS-13 carried out 'medieval' killings, feds say

https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/d...ment03-als.JPG Paul Delacourt, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, walks past photos of suspected MS-13 gang members during a news conference where federal authorities announced that nearly two dozen people related to the gang had been indicted on charges including racketeering and murder.
(Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

By James Queally, Matthew Ormseth
July 16, 2019
10:09 AM

MS-13 gang members in Los Angeles hacked to death seven people in the last two years, including a rival gang member who was dismembered and had his heart cut out by six MS-13 soldiers in the Angeles National Forest for defacing the gang’s graffiti, federal authorities alleged in an indictment unsealed Tuesday.
Twenty-two people allegedly affiliated with the gang’s Fulton clique in the San Fernando Valley were indicted by a grand jury on racketeering charges that include nearly 200 criminal acts, committed across several states over nine years.
The sweeping, 78-page indictment marks the latest salvo between California law enforcement and the notorious gang, which was formed decades ago in Los Angeles and has since become a bogeyman for President Trump, who evokes its macabre killings in his rhetoric against illegal immigration.
Four people were killed in the Angeles National Forest by members of the Fulton clique wielding machetes, baseball bats and knives, the indictment alleges. Along with a slaying in the Malibu hills and another in Whitsett Fields Park in North Hollywood — the clique’s “stronghold,” prosecutors said — the six killings were committed by gang members hoping to gain entry into or advance within the clique’s ranks, according to the indictment.
Sixteen of the 22 people indicted are charged in connection with those six slayings, which authorities called so “heinous, cruel or depraved” that the defendants are eligible for the death penalty. Prosecutors have not said whether they intend to seek it.
All 22 of the alleged MS-13 affiliates are in custody. Eighteen had been apprehended over the last year on a range of federal and state charges, authorities said. Three were arrested in recent days in the Los Angeles area by a task force composed of FBI agents, LAPD officers and Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies. Another alleged MS-13 affiliate was arrested over the weekend in Oklahoma.
Authorities also filed two more cases under seal against juvenile defendants in federal court. Some of the suspects were high school students at the time of the slayings, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Law enforcement officials said the two-year spasm of violence was carried out largely by Honduran and Salvadoran immigrants hoping to return MS-13 to its bloody roots. Paul Delacourt, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, said the bloodshed was motivated in part by the group’s desire to make MS-13 less deferential to the Mexican Mafia, which wields influence over most Hispanic and Latino street gangs in the Los Angeles area.

Of the 22 defendants, 19 had entered the United States illegally in the past three or four years, according to Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles. Many of their alleged victims had recently come to the country as well, officials said.
“These gang members sought out young victims in their teens and early 20s who were new to this country. Many had recently immigrated from El Salvador and Honduras. They were alone, looking to fit in with others from their native countries,” Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey said. “But instead they met their demise quickly at the hands of gang members who preyed upon them.”
The Fulton clique targeted people they believed to be cooperating with law enforcement, who belonged to a rival gang or who’d fraudulently claimed membership in MS-13, Lacey said. Six of the slayings described in the indictment unsealed Tuesday were committed to join or advance within the Fulton clique, authorities said.
MS-13 in Los Angeles traditionally required new members to be jumped in, or beaten while a shot-caller counted aloud to 13, prosecutors wrote in court papers. But beginning in 2017, the indictment says, L.A.-area cliques that identified with “503” – an orthodox, ultra-violent subset of MS-13 that broke off when the gang’s incarcerated leadership engaged in peace talks with El Salvadorian authorities – required would-be initiates to kill a rival, or perceived rival, to join.
After being told by a shot-caller to “take out the trash,” Luis Arturo Gonzalez, Edwin Martinez and an unidentified third affiliate in January shot to death Bradley Hanaway, a 34-year-old homeless man who was staying in Whitsett Fields Park, the epicenter of the gang’s activity, prosecutors alleged.
Another victim, identified in court papers as “J.S.,” was believed by the Fulton clique to be a rival gang member who’d crossed out the clique’s graffiti. In March 2017, he was choked by at least four MS-13 affiliates at an entrance to the Los Angeles River in North Hollywood, driven into Angeles National Forest, and killed with a machete, the indictment says. Angel Amadeo Guzman, a shot-caller for the Fulton clique, carved out his heart before flinging his body parts into a canyon, prosecutors allege.
Edwin Isaac Mendez, who had taken pictures of the mutilated body, was given the name “Predator” after taking part in the killing, the indictment says.
Guzman’s attorneys didn’t respond to requests for comment. It was unclear whether Mendez had retained an attorney.

Gerardo Alvarado and Bryan Alberto Ordones used a fake Facebook profile, purporting to belong to a girl, to lure another alleged victim to Angeles National Forest, according to the indictment. The victim, identified as “G.B.,”, was driven by Alvarado and Ordones into the forest, where three other MS-13 affiliates were waiting, the indictment says. After killing him with a machete, prosecutors allege, the gang removed his clothes and two pendants depicting Santa Muerte – the saint of death.
Alvarado later posed for pictures wearing one of the pendants, the indictment says.
Led by shot-callers Guzman, Edgard Velasquez and Walter Chavez Larin, the Fulton clique carved out a toehold at Whitsett Fields Park in North Hollywood, where “nearly every available surface” -- walls, trees, bathrooms, alleyways and nearby residences – were soon tattooed with MS-13 and Fulton clique graffiti, the indictment says. The clique also gathered at an entrance to the Los Angeles River and in abandoned buildings dubbed, in gang parlance, “destroyers,” to socialize, use drugs and discuss and carry out crimes, according to the indictment.
Authorities began digging into the Fulton clique’s activities in late 2017, when detectives investigating the disappearance of 16-year-old Brayan Alejandro Andino discovered the teen’s body in Lopez Canyon, according to Los Angeles Police Department Deputy Chief Horace Frank. The teen was lured to the Lake Balboa area by two female associates of MS-13, and then beaten to death.
“No parent should ever have to experience what Brayan’s and the other parents and family members have endured, and continued to endure,” Frank said.
Despite the recent surge in bloodshed, MS-13’s standing in Los Angeles has weakened somewhat. Last year, then-Police Chief Charlie Beck told The Times the gang had between 700 and 800 members active within the city, compared to approximately 1,000 in 2011. Beck said the gang was not among the five most active in the city, but stressed he still considered them a threat.
Frank declined to comment on the gang’s current status in the city on Tuesday. The U.S. Department of Justice considers MS-13 to be one of the most violent transnational criminal organizations with a presence in the country, and the gang is often referenced by President Trump when he calls for stronger immigration enforcement.
Last month, the LAPD arrested several suspected members of the gang as part of a broader investigation into a series of violent events in North Hollywood, including the slaying of Hanaway, the homeless man staying in Whitsett Fields Park.

In a statement, the department had said it noticed an uptick in MS-13 graffiti in the San Fernando Valley.
“Over the past year, tagging and other evidence of MS-13’s presence has been observed at multiple locations throughout the Valley,” the statement said. “Officials believe the gang is attempting to establish a foothold by directly challenging rival gangs in the area.”

https://www.latimes.com/california/s...NqDUk6WHxCc-As

Send National Guard and our Troops into California and shut that lawless state down!

Sanctuary cities and states ARE an act of Treason and Sedition against our government, our Laws, and the citizens of the United States!

UNITED States...we should all be UNITED against illegal immigration and this invasion at our border!

California officials keep schoolkids in the dark about MS-13 slaughter spree in their midst

There's an open-borders political establishment there that wants it that way.

July 26, 2019
By Monica Showalter

If an 'ordinary' (if that is the word) axe murderer were running around at a public school, wouldn't it have made sense to get the criminal out as quickly as possible? No niceties, just get the beast the heck out to protect the kids.
In the sanctuary city of Los Angeles, things are different for illegals. Twenty-two MS-13 members who'd chopped up a classmate and ripped his heart out at a Panorama City neighborhood school were apparently left to do what they do by authorities, and anyone saying anything about it or wondering where the disappeared kid was got sanctioned and punished. The remaining kids were reportedly so scared they wouldn't talk about it, according to the report. What a nightmare school going to that school must have been and probably still is.

Here's the Fox News report, drawing from a Los Angeles Times story that described the MS-13 criminal spree as something that just, sort of, "spilled over":

Students, parents and teachers at a California high school community are expressing unease this week after it emerged that administrators – following instructions from police – kept them in the dark about classmates who allegedly were linked to violent MS-13 activity, a report says.
The community at Panorama High School told the Los Angeles Times they received few to no details until prosecutors last week announced murder and racketeering charges against 22 suspected members of an MS-13 clique in the Los Angeles area. Six Panorama students, the newspaper adds, were detained in February 2018 with no explanation. They are now linked to the off-campus killings of a classmate and another individual allegedly carried out by the clique, investigators revealed.

And yes, nearly all of the arrested were illegals. They were allowed to walk around among schoolkids and continue their business until authorities could close in on them for multiple grisly murders. The kid who got his heart ripped out in the canyon after being lured there by a female teenaged gang member apparently was here illegally, too. And according to Homeland Security's Ken Cuchinelli, five of these charmers were asylum seekers. I wonder if the murdered kid was, too, because he sure didn't find asylum where he was. Asylum seekers have been lionized in the press as the be-all and end-all justification for open, brazen illegal immigration and the left has fought like a tiger to permit all asylum seekers to operate here until their cases can be adjudicated in court several years down the line. They've even fought to keep such asylum seekers undeportable even after they have been ordered deported by a judge.
Now they're terrorizing the schools the very illegal immigrant families as well as "unaccompanied children" are turning up at as they all get called asylum seekers. And they're silencing anyone who sounds worried.
This sounds like a cauldron of hell, courtesy of Democrat policies and the work of their media enablers. Should this kind of barbarism be going on here? Should teachers who speak out about mysteriously missing students be gagged and punished, as one of them actually was? That's what's going on. Officialdom has a strong interest in keeping word about the violence from illegals very, very silent, quite similar to the way European officials attempt to keep the crimes of their illegals from the Middle East out of the papers.
The rationale in the Times piece cited by Fox was that the cops needed to build their case and protect intelligence. There's a case for that, of course, but to gag people asking questions is an abuse of power. And what if the illegals had committed more crimes based on that silence? What if they were a danger even as police officials said they weren't a danger. The reaction from the kids in the piece suggests they did think they were a danger. And that fear of saying anything at all from them sounds as though they were petrified.
It might just have been a bit more of allowing the investigation to run its course that was going on here. We all know that sanctuary city Los Angeles has an interest in encouraging illegal immigration and that means keeping omerta about the inherent violence of letting in all comers unvetted, and placing them among schoolchildren.
Panorama City is a neighborhood of Los Angeles on the San Fernando Valley side that is home to a vast swath of illegal immigrants. It's represented by a disreputable but powerful local Democratic machine congressman, Tony Cardenas, who just got some stunning charges of drugging and raping a local teenager when he was a city councilman mysteriously dropped this month (the press still hasn't asked any questions) as well as no promised 'speedy' investigation on the Washington-side from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He's quite a skater. He also has a huge illegal alien constituency with few authorized voters, and not surprisingly, is one of the illegal immigrant's best friends in Congress. Panorama City is the center of action of other corrupt politicians, too, such as Richard Alarcon, who's since been thrown out of power in disgrace over his multiple houses. Those are just two examples of what's going on in the lawless political atmosphere that allows MS-13 to flourish at schools so long as they don't draw too much attention from cops. It serves the political machine's interests, and the interests of the rest of the sanctuary political establishment. Which is the real reason why silence about MS-13's sick festering crime spree is what they all want.

Image credit: FBI public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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