The US Department of Justice announced the indictment against two alleged members of the MS-13 gang on Long Island, an area of New York state affected by gang violence, for the murder of a minor and an adult.
The accusations seek to provide justice for the murders of 15-year-old teenager Miguel García Morán in 2016 in Brentwood (Long Island), and of a man who allegedly also belonged to that gang, Carlos Lemus Interiano, in 2023 in Fort Washington (Maryland), as reported in a statement.
The defendants, Edwin Chavez Garay, 25, and Jairo Diaz Gamez, 27, appeared in a Long Island court after a grand jury indicted them in a broad indictment against other members of MS-13 for racketeering offenses.
Authorities said Chavez and Diaz are members of a subgroup of MS-13, the gang originally from El Salvador, called Vegas Locos Salvatruchas, and committed the murders as part of a battle between rival gangs as they rose through the ranks.
The subjects lured the teenager García, who was Ecuadorian, to a wooded area in Brentwood and “participated” in a fatal beating with metal bars, “mistakenly” believing that he belonged to a rival gang, a statement details.
Years after the young man's murder, the defendants, who had risen in the Vegas gang, took Lemus, who had "lost the support" of the gang, from New York to Maryland, and moved him to a wooded area where they shot him to death, the note details.
They also later participated in a plot to kill another former gang member, Carlos Lopez Lopez, in Blue Point, New York, believing him to be an informant, a murder for which three other men were charged in the broader indictment.
The defendants face maximum life sentences “or the possibility of the death penalty,” the note details.
With information from EFE.
