Trial begins against MS-13 gang associate

CENTRAL ISLIP, New York, USA (AP) A federal jury in the United States will hear opening arguments Monday in the trial of a Long Island woman accused of luring four young men to the site where they were killed by more than a dozen members of the MS-13 gang.

The prosecution says Leniz Escobar helped orchestrate the 2017 massacre as a teenage gang partner before saying she was the victim of an ambush. Escobar pleaded not guilty to association charges for the quadruple murder that prosecutors described as “a gruesome frenzy of violence” with machetes, knives and branches in a park in Central Islip.

MS-13 had been trying to settle scores, says the prosecution, and thought the young victims were members of a rival gang, 18th Street Gang. The victims' families have denied that any of them were a gang member.

Prosecutors have said that Escobar, who was 17 at the time, was trying to ingratiate himself with MS-13 and alerted his members to where the victims were in a wooded area. Under MS-13 rules, the killings had been “pre-authorized” by gang leaders, prosecutors said, and participants in the violence could gain membership or rise in the ranks of the gang.

Authorities said Escobar later launched his cell phone from a moving vehicle, as well as the SIM card that had been removed and damaged to such an extent that the police were unable to recover its contents.

“Additionally, Escobar got rid of the bloody clothes he wore on the night of the murders,” prosecutors wrote in a document to the court.

MS-13, also known as La Mara Salvatrucha, recruits teenagers from El Salvador and Honduras, although many of the members were born in the United States. The gang is accused of dozens of murders since January 2016 in a vast section of Long Island.