Salvadoran MS-13 gangbangers went “human hunting” in a spree that claimed 11 victims in California and Nevada, prosecutors say.
In Las Vegas, Assistant U.S. Attorney Melanee Smith said the gang members “went out hunting, looking for people they could kill,” according to the New York Post.
Joel Vargas-Escobar, David Arturo Perez-Manchame, and Jose Luis Reynaldo Reyes-Castillo, have been charged with murder, attempted murder, kidnapping in aid of racketeering, and weapons charges in a murder spree that raged from 2017 to 2018.
Prosecutors described the murder of 21-year-old Izaak Towery, who they say was mistaken for a member of the gang’s rival, the 18th Street gang.
Towery’s body was found on 2018 after he had disappeared off the streets of Las Vegas. He was stabbed 235 times, police said.
Smith added that Towery had no idea what was happening to him because the attackers were speaking Spanish and he doesn’t speak the language.
Another victim was 19-year-old Abel Rodriguez, who was stabbed so many times that his body was unrecognizable when police found him, prosecutors said.
Investigators tied Perez-Manchame and Reyes-Castillo to Towery’s murder. Reyes-Castillo was linked to the murder of Rodriguez.
The suspects were also linked to a third murder, that of Arquimidez Sandoval-Martinez, whose body was found cut to pieces in the Vegas desert and riddled with multiple bullet wounds.
MS-13 continues to represent a major threat to the U.S. In January, four members of the dangerous gang were arrested for the murder of a teen in Maryland.
In December of last year, El Salvador sentenced 248 members of the gang to up to 1,335 years in prison for multiple crimes.
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