Mass murder gang
4 SLAIN ON L.I. — COPS FEAR MS-13 BODY COUNT HITS 10
MEMBERS OF the MS-13 street gang, already blamed for six Long Island slayings, emerged Thursday as the leading suspects in the execution of four young men.
The butchered corpses were quickly linked to the violent crew because of the brutality of the suburban slaughter near the soccer fields at a Central Islip park.
“We are clearly looking into that possibility, although we have not ruled out any possibilities at this point,” said Suffolk County Police Commissioner Timothy Sini.
The victims, whose blood-spattered bodies were found Wednesday night in Recreation Village Park, were a 16-year-old boy, two 18-year-olds and a 20-year-old.
The killings were “consistent with the modus operandi of MS-13” — a violent gang already implicated in last year’s murders of two high school girls, Sini said.
The doomed quartet “all suffered from significant trauma throughout their body,” the commissioner said Thursday. “It appears they were killed with a sharper-edged instrument.”
The attackers who went after the murdered girls used a machete and baseball bats, officials said.
MS-13 is also suspected in the murders of four teenage boys whose skeletal remains were found on Long Island in recent months.
Though officials did not identify the victims, the brother of 18-year-old Jorge Tigre said his sibling was among the dead. William Tigre, 21, said he was told about his kid brother’s killing by a witness who fled the carnage with his life.
The man “called saying that my brother was here, dead,” Tigre told reporters. “He just said, ‘I saw your brother dying, and I escaped.’ That’s the only thing he said. He didn’t say nothing else.”
The police commissioner said his department was working with the FBI on the quadruple homicide, and promised to keep the heat on the local gang.
“This is a long-term war,” Sini said. “And make no mistake about it, it’s a war.”
MS-13 was founded in Los Angeles by immigrants seeking safe haven from a civil war in their native El Salvador during the 1980s.
It was not immediately known if the killings were connected to the gang-related homicides that took place in Brentwood — the town next to Central Islip — in the last few months.
On March 2, eight members of the vicious gang were arrested for the revenge killings of best friends Nisa Mickens, 15, and Kayla Cuevas, 16.
The horrific killing of the girls was sparked by a gang dispute at Brentwood High School a week earlier, according to a 34-page federal indictment filed last month.
The investigation into their murders led to the discovery of the skeletal remains of three teenage boys also believed to be killed by MS-13.
Another victim, former gangbanger Jose Pena-Hernandez, 18, was found dead on the grounds of a psychiatric center in June — cut down for violating gang rules, officials said.
Suffolk County cops urge anyone with information about the murders to call (800) 220-TIPS. There’s a $25,000 reward.