Federal prosecutors added charges against MS-13 members in several brutal murders across Queens.
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Federal prosecutors brought criminal charges against 23 members of MS-13 in a series of brutal murders across Queens, including the torture and beating of a 17-year-old boy in Flushing’s Kissena Park in 2018.
A 48-count, superseding indictment was unsealed in Brooklyn federal court on June 21 charging members and associates of the violent transnational criminal organization La Mara Salvatrucha, known as the MS-13, with racketeering conspiracy and related offenses including multiple murders and other acts of violence, drug distribution conspiracy and laundering conspiracy. The indictment adds charges against national MS-13 gang leader Edenison Velasquez Larin who was already in federal custody for his leadership role in allegedly ordering murders, drug distribution, and money laundering for MS-13.
Alleged MS-13 associates Juan Amaya-Ramirez, 25, of Fresh Meadows, and Oscar Flores Mejia, 23, of Elmhurst, were previously charged in the murder of 17-year-old Andy Peralta in Kissena Park on April 23, 2018. The superseding indictment adds murder charges against Leyla Carranza, 22, of Richmond Virginia, who allegedly lured Peralta to the park where the assailants beat, stabbed and strangled him and then posed for photographs while standing over the teenager’s corpse while they displayed MS-13 gang signs with their hands.
Seven other gang members were previously charged in the Peralta homicide investigation.
“The murders and other crimes of violence allegedly committed by these defendants were brutal, cold-blooded, and utterly senseless,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said. “This office and our law enforcement partners are working tirelessly to dismantle MS-13 at all of its levels, and we will not relent until this transnational criminal organization, its leaders, members, and associates are held accountable for the extreme violence and other criminal…
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