4 bodies found in suburban N.Y. park

CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. — The bodies of four men, all described as having suffered “significant trauma,” were discovered in a park in a suburban New York neighborhood that has for years contended with a growing problem of gang violence.

The victims, who were not immediately identified, were found in a wooded area near a recreation center in Central Islip, east of New York City. Crime scene investigators and detectives were scouring the woods for evidence on the edge of a complex of soccer and football fields and a children’s playground.

Justin Meyers, assistant to the Suffolk County police commissioner, said Thursday that the killings all appeared to be “recent homicides.” The discovery of the bodies comes about a month after the arrest of eight MS-13 gang members in connection with the September killings of two teenage girls in nearby Brentwood.

Mr. Meyers declined to comment on whether the killings of the four men were gang-related.

Gang violence has been a problem in Central Islip, Brentwood and other Long Island communities for over a decade, but Suffolk County police and the FBI began pouring resources into a crackdown after the killings of the girls, along with two other Brentwood High students involved in separate killings, sparked outrage.

The MS-13 gang, also called Mara Salvatrucha, 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. It grew after some members were deported to El Salvador, helping to turn that country into one of the most violent places in the world. It’s now a major international criminal enterprise with tens of thousands of members in several Central American countries and many U.S. states.