MS-13 gang suspects indicted in slayings of 3 teenagers
CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. — Federal prosecutors said Thursday they had captured the members of a violent street gang who killed three high school students, including two girls who were inseparable best friends and were attacked with a machete and baseball bats as they walked through their suburban neighbourhood.
Thirteen members of local cliques of the MS-13 street gang were charged with a slew of violent crimes and seven killings over a five-year period, prosecutors and police said.
Among the dead: Brentwood High School students Nisa Mickens, 15, and Kayla Cuevas, 16, who were ambushed by a carload of other teens on Sept. 13, and their former schoolmate Jose Pena-Hernandez, 18, whose corpse was found on the grounds of an abandoned state psychiatric hospital following his disappearance in June.
The killings came amid a national conversation about illegal immigration, and prosecutors revealed 10 of the 13 indicted people were citizens of El Salvador or Honduras who were in the U.S. illegally, including most of the people directly implicated in the killings.