A member of the violent MS-13 street gang pled guilty on Thursday to his role in the brutal murders of four people, including two teenage girls who were beaten with baseball bats and hacked to death with machetes on Long Island.
The 26-year-old man pled guilty to racketeering and firearms charges related to the murder of the teen girls, as well as two men.
The young girls, best friends Nisa Mickens, 15, and Kayla Cuevas, 16, were ambushed and killed on September 13, 2016, in a retaliatory move by gang members.
The murders happened on a residential street in the girls’ Long Island neighborhood of Brentwood, about 40 miles east of Manhattan.
The 26-year-old man was accused of being one of the MS-13 gang members who attacked them.
“The defendant and others chased and attacked them with baseball bats and machetes,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Justina Geraci said. “The defendant hit one of the girls so hard the bat actually broke.”
“I am guilty,” the MS-13 member said in a statement read by his lawyer at his plea hearing in Central Islip federal court.
Dressed in a yellow prison jumpsuit, the man, who goes by “Oso” and “Turkey,” admitted that he had been in a car with other members of the Long Island contingent of MS-13 when they spotted the girls and attacked them.
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“I used a bat to hit one of the girls. I also hit the second girl,” the killer said in his statement, adding that he is “aware that they died as a result of the attack.”
The girls had allegedly disrespected gang members, the murderer said.
The bodies of the murdered teenagers had many lacerations, as well as significant blunt force trauma to their heads and bodies when they were found, prosecutors said.
“As part of his desire to gain status within MS-13, [the killer] repeatedly acted with complete disregard for human life, killing four individuals along with multiple other attempts,” Breon Peace, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said.
The killer also admitted to using a baseball bat in another 2016 murder, a fatal gang attack on a 34-year-old man, Dewann Stacks. He also admitted to standing guard as gang members fatally shot a 29-year-old man, Esteban Alvarado-Bonilla, in a Central Islip deli in 2017.
He also pled guilty to arson and four attempted murder charges, including trying to kill his fellow prison inmates.
He begged prosecutors to make sure it was known he never cooperated with federal authorities, his lawyer saying he was fearful of MS-13 retaliating against him in prison if they believed he did cooperate.
The shocking double murder of the teen girls made national headlines at the time.
Former President Donald Trump visited the Long Island neighborhood and promised to “dismantle, decimate and eradicate” the MS-13 gang.
MS-13, a notoriously brutal gang that originated in Los Angeles but has a strong presence in El Salvador, had more than 10,000 members in the U.S. in 2017.
In recent years, MS-13 operatives have also engaged in human smuggling and served as protection for the drug cartels near the southern U.S. border.