Nearly two dozen MS-13 gang members indicted over string of murders and rape in New York

Nearly two dozen suspected MS-13 gang members who were behind a string of murders and rapes in the New York City borough of Queens were arrested this week, according to federal prosecutors. 

The 23 Mara Salvatrucha gang members, known as MS-13, were charged with "racketeering conspiracy and related offenses, including multiple murders and other acts of violence, drug distribution conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy," according to a 48-count indictment unsealed this week. 

The crimes the gang members, aged 19 to 35, committed were “brutal, cold-blooded, and utterly senseless,” said Attorney Breon Peace about the string of murders that the gang members carried out.  

Among those arrested was the alleged national leader of the MS-13 and the Fulton Locos Salvatrucha clique, Edenilson Velasquez Maron. He is being charged with ordering murders, distributing drugs, and carrying out money laundering operations for MS-13. 

One of the gang members, identified as Leyla Carranza, was charged with murder after allegedly luring 17-year-old Andy Peralta to a park in Queens in April 2018, where he was “fatally beaten, stabbed, and strangled.”

"Peralta’s killers photographed themselves posing over Peralta’s corpse while they displayed MS-13 gang signs with their hands," the Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of New York said. 

Other members, Victor Lopez and Tito Martinez Alvarenga, were charged with being involved in two other murders. Victor Alvareng was killed near his home in Flushing in November 2018. 

Lopez, Alvarenga, and gang member Ramiro Gutierrez trailed and assaulted Abel Mosso inside a No. 7 train in Flushing in February 2019. After dragging Mosso out onto the platform, “Gutierrez shouted in Spanish, ‘Nobody gets involved, we’re MS-13, we’re going to kill him,’" before shooting him multiple times.

“Transnational gangs, like MS-13, threaten our national security and the safety of our neighborhoods by ravaging our communities with violent crime and narcotics,” said HSI New York Special Agent-in-Charge Arvelo.  

“This coordinated multi-agency law enforcement effort is the best means of disrupting MS-13’s illicit gang activity and undermining its ability to reign terror and violence in New York communities and elsewhere,” he added.