JR. SLAY PUTS HEAT ON GANG
Scrutiny for earlier stab
The hunt is on for a group of f Trinitarios gang members who allegedly knifed a teen on a Bronx street last month — an attack that is drawing more scrutiny after the gang’s mistakenidentity murder of 15-year-old Lesandro “Junior” Guzman-Feliz. The teenage thugs beat a 17-year-old boy near East 196th Street and Jerome Avenue on June 8 before slicing him in the head with a knife, according to police on Sunday. The victim escaped serious injury and his three assailants — reputed members of the bloodthirsty Trinitarios street gang — were in the wind Sunday, cops said. It remains unclear what motivated the brutal attack — which would be the third attributed to the Trinitarios in a span of just 13 days. On June 18, a band of Trinitarios chased a 14-year-old boy onto the Bronx River Parkway, stabbing him several times and leaving him critically injured, cops said. Two days later, Trinitarios armed with machetes and knives butchered Guzman-Feliz outside a bodega after mistaking him for a rival thug who made a sex tape with a gang member’s relative.
NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill cited all three attacks during a Sunday radio appearance in which he urged community members to help fight the scourge of gang violence.
“If anything good comes of [the Guzman-Feliz murder], it will make people understand that we need the community,” O’Neill told John Catsimatidis on his radio show “The Cats Roundtable.”
The commissioner called the “unspeakable” murder of Guzman-Feliz “absolutely [a] total disregard for humanity” and said “everybody in New York needs to look at that video” of the attack to comprehend the brutality of gangs.
Meanwhile Sunday, the mother of a Bronx boy killed by gun violence in 2008 offered a message of support to Guzman-Feliz’s grieving family.
“I’m deeply sorry for your loss, and can understand your pain because I’ve dealt with the same level of pain for the last ten years,” Adela Moreira, 62, told The Post one day after visiting the memorial to Guzman-Feliz.
Moreira’s son, Troy Matthew Zapata, was Guzman-Feliz’s age when he was killed in a random drive-by shooting shortly after visiting a friend’s home in the borough’s Adams Houses.