At least 15 MS-13 members charged in N.Y. murders

CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. — At least 15 members of the MS-13 street gang have been arrested on murder and other charges following a spate of bloodshed that included the massacre of four young men in a Long Island park and the killing of a suspected gang rival inside a deli, police said Wednesday.

Six of those charged are juveniles who participated in the deadly acts, said Timothy Sini, Suffolk County’s police commissioner.

The majority of the arrests happened in the past week, though Sini noted his department has been waging an aggressive campaign against the gang following the deaths of 11 people in the Brentwood and Central Islip communities since last September. Those killed included high school students.

Sini spoke to reporters after federal authorities announced a superseding indictment charging a wide-ranging series of crimes.

Three suspected MS-13 gang members rounded up in the Suffolk County police sweep are among those named in the indictment on murder and other charges stemming from the killings in April. A fourth gang member named in the indictment in the park murders isn’t in custody, according to court documents.

“We’re going to keep the pressure on MS-13,” Sini told reporters outside a federal courthouse on Long Island, located in the same town where the park massacre occurred. “We have to make sure it is uncomfortable as possible for MS-13.”

MS-13, also called Mara Salvatrucha, is a major international criminal enterprise, with tens of thousands of members in several Central American countries and many U.S. states. It is believed to have been founded as a neighborhood street gang in Los Angeles in the mid-1980s by immigrants fleeing a civil war in El Salvador.