A frontrunner of an MS-13 gang clique in New York pleaded responsible on Wednesday to racketeering and firearms fees in a case involving eight murders, together with the 2016 killings of two highschool women who have been hacked and crushed to demise as they strolled by their leafy, suburban neighborhood on Lengthy Island.
Alexi Saenz entered the plea in federal court docket in Central Islip. Prosecutors beforehand withdrew an try to hunt the demise penalty in his case.
Among the many deaths he was accused of ordering are the killings of Kayla Cuevas, 16, and Nisa Mickens, 15, lifelong mates and classmates at Brentwood highschool.
Their deaths centered the nation’s consideration on MS-13 gang violence in the course of the administration of Donald Trump. The Republican president referred to as for the demise penalty for Saenz and others arrested within the killings.
The women’ deaths led to questions on whether or not police had been aggressive sufficient in confronting what was then a critical risk of gangs growing inside space excessive colleges.
For months in 2016, Hispanic youngsters and younger males had been disappearing in Brentwood, a working-class group 40 miles east of New York Metropolis. After Cuevas and Mickens have been killed, police found the our bodies of three different younger individuals in Brentwood, ages 15, 18 and 19, who had vanished months earlier.
Police and federal brokers arrested dozens of suspected members of MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, a transnational prison group believed to have been based as a neighborhood road gang in Los Angeles within the mid-Eighties by individuals fleeing civil struggle in El Salvador.
Cuevas’s mom, Evelyn Rodriguez, turned an anti-gang activist after her daughter’s demise however was herself killed in 2018. Rodriguez was fatally struck by a automotive throughout a dispute over a memorial marking the second anniversary of her daughter’s demise. The driving force, Annmarie Drago, pleaded responsible in 2024 to negligent murder.
Saenz’s legal professionals didn’t instantly reply to an e mail looking for touch upon Wednesday.
Prosecutors mentioned Saenz, also referred to as “Blasty” and “Huge Homie”, was the chief of an MS-13 clique working in Brentwood and Central Islip often known as Sailors Locos Salvatruchas Westside. Prices are nonetheless pending towards his brother, Jairo Saenz, who prosecutors say was second-in-command within the native gang.
Kayla’s father, Freddy Cuevas, mentioned outdoors court docket that he was upset that the demise penalty had been taken off the desk.
“He’s an animal. He’s inhumane,” Freddy Cuevas mentioned of Saenz. “Hopefully justice shall be served quickly and we will put this all behind us so far as the households are involved.”
Nisa’s mom, Elizabeth Alvarado, expressed reduction that she and different households of the victims wouldn’t should undergo the trauma of a trial.
“All I need is my daughter to be at peace,” she mentioned by tears as she wore a black shirt along with her daughter’s title on the again. “The extra time we’ve got out, she isn’t going to be at peace. On the finish of the day, she goes to be blissful as a result of it would all be over.”
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