MS-13 member laughed when he recalled the killing

[brassmonkey]

Jose Lopez Torres laughed when he recalled brutally stabbing to death a fellow gang member who begged for his life.

"Spare my life, I'll go very far away," Torres recalled Nelson Omar Quintanilla Trujillo saying as a group of MS-13 members surrounded him in a Fairfax County park.

"Yes, you're going away far. Kill him," Torres said he replied and then laughed.

That boast was recorded by federal authorities, and on Wednesday, Torres was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Alexandria to a life sentence plus 20 years in federal prison for his role in the death of Trujillo as well as the attempted slaying of another gang member.

His conviction was part of a sweeping federal case against Northern Virginia members of the El Salvador-based gang, in which six defendants pleaded guilty and six more were found guilty at trial. Torres and Jesus Alejandro Chavez, also sentenced Wednesday, are the first of those who went to trial to receive their punishments.


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Both Trujillo and the man Torres tried to kill, identified only as Peligroso, which means dangerous in Spanish, were suspected of betraying the gang.

"These people are not people, because the death that my brother suffered is not the kind of death that can be done by someone who has a heart," Ruth Ascencio, Trujillo's sister, told the court in Spanish as she asked for the longest possible sentence. "These people don't deserve to be out on the street."

Torres, 26, became an MS-13 member in El Salvador at age 9 and had risen to second in command of his local Alexandria clique after he illegally immigrated to the United States, prosecutors said.

He orchestrated the slaying of Trujillo, who was lured to Holmes Run Park in October 2013 under the pretense that he would get a beating for minor transgressions against the gang. Instead, Torres instructed seven others to hold Trujillo down and stab him to death with a knife and machete and then bury the body in the woods.

Trujillo "was a human being who was more than just a gang member," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Julia K. Martinez, and Torres "deserves more than a life sentence."

Chavez was sentenced Wednesday to two life sentences plus 10 years in prison for the June 2014 fatal shooting of a man he believed had insulted MS-13. Chavez had gotten out of prison just eight days earlier on a violent robbery conviction.

The Alexandria native had joined MS-13 in prison, and prosecutors said he was eager to prove himself on the street. While looking for rival gang members in the Chirilagua neighborhood of Alexandria, Chavez and fellow MS-13 members provoked a fight with Julio Urrutia and his friend. Urrutia shoved one of Chavez's accomplices; Chavez responded by shooting him in the neck. Urrutia died two days later in the hospital.

The victim "was not a gang member," Martinez said, "but merely in the wrong place at the wrong time."

U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee said Chavez, 26, had been in and out of the criminal justice system since age 10.

"You . . . are a menace to society," he said.

Lee rejected a request from Chavez's family for a prison near the Washington area, saying he assumed that the Federal Bureau of Prisons would want to separate the defendants in the case.

The lengthy sentences for both men, Lee said, were intended to shield the public and to send a message.

"We are not going to let MS-13 rule our parks, our schools, our neighborhoods," he said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local...447_story.html

[MiamiBoyz]

[Jigster715]

The New America...
Surprised they convicted him instead of giving him a free ride through college.

[j3rkules]

This is a perfect example of when capital punishment is needed.