Sheriff holds six linked to notorious MS-13 gang
Lake Worth ‘terrors’ include man accused in 2016 machete attack.
LAKE WORTH — Before dawn Tuesday, hidden in doorways of the single-story homes south of downtown Lake Worth, dozens of men pulled shirt collars over their heads, held up towels or shared jackets.
They ducked from sheets of rain and kept an eye out for the passenger vans and revamped school buses that would take them to work, likely in landscaping or on farms.
To MS-13 gang members, those men — often day laborers paid in cash who don’t have the papers needed to be in the United States legally — make easy targets. They figure their victims won’t resist demands either for cash or electronics and won’t report the robberies to authorities, according to the Palm Beach County Sheriff ’s Office, the agency that patrols Lake Worth.
Six of those neighborhood “terrors” have been arrested in the last week, sheriff ’s authorities announced Friday. They’re accused of robbing, shooting and killing along those streets during a particularly violent month in the city.
It’s unclear how long the international gang — known for its violent crimes, as well as drug and human trafficking — has been in Lake Worth, but records indicate at least one of the gang members arrested last week has been involved in the area’s crime for more than a year.
Victor Fuentes, 20, the only one of the six arrested who is older than 18, was booked Saturday on an attempted-murder charge in an August 2016 stabbing in which he is accused of using a machete to nearly slice off a teenager’s arm. He already was being held in the Palm Beach County Jail without bail in two unrelated armed robbery and murder cases.
A sheriff’s agent recognized Fuentes as the suspect in that 2016 stabbing when Fuentes was booked into the jail Thursday in those homicide cases, according to an arrest report.
When authorities questioned Fuentes about the stabbing, he confessed, telling them he had felt the teen had shown him no respect during a fight the previous day.
Fuentes said he waited for the teen that Friday afternoon to walk by a store on Second Avenue North as the teen headed home from school.
The two agreed to a oneon-one fight, according to sheriff ’s records.
But Fuentes pulled a machete from his pants and sliced the teen’s arm as the apparently unarmed teen covered his face.
That arrest report, filed with the court Saturday, indicates Fuentes has had ties to MS-13 since as early as August 2016, when he was 18.
Sheriff ’s authorities suspect they only arrested a fraction of the gang’s Lake Worth members and still are actively investigating the city’s recent crimes.
At Friday’s news conference, they stressed that they are looking for more suspects and encouraged anyone, regardless of citizenship status, to contact the sheriff ’s office or Crime Stoppers of Palm Beach County if they have information about crimes.
Shell casings linked at least three armed robberies to the Oct. 30 and Nov. 5 homicides in which Fuentes and five juveniles face charges. Each of those suspects is in the country illegally and all face deportation, the Sheriff ’s Office said. They are:
Fuentes, 20, of El Salvador, who faces charges in both killings.
Two 17-year-old Salvadoran citizens who face charges in both killings. A 17-year-old Honduran citizen who faces charges in the Nov. 5 killing.
Two 16-year-old Salvadoran citizens who face charges in the Nov. 5 killing.
A search warrant for surveillance-camera footage of one of the robberies linked to the killings indicates a man was shot near the hip at about 9 p.m. Oct. 29 at the intersection of Third Avenue North and North E Street. The man said he had been walking home when a white SUV pulled up next to him.
A passenger pointed a gun out of the front window and demanded the man’s belongings.
Five people, including the gunman, exited the SUV as the man reached into his breast pocket for money.
The gunman fired a round into the left side of the man’s lower back. The bullet exited near his right pelvis, authorities said.
He was rushed to St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach to undergo what authorities called “lifesaving surgery.”
Records do not indicate who the suspected gunman is.
After a back-and-forth with the resident whose surveillance cameras may have captured footage of that robbery, authorities obtained a search warrant for the equipment.
The man stressed he did not want to be involved in the investigation and claimed the cameras did not record, shooting only live-view footage.
It was unclear Tuesday whether the cameras captured either the robbery or shooting.
The day after that robbery, about a mile-and-ahalf south, 33-year-old Lucio Velazquez-Morales was found shot to death in front of a home on South H Street. And six days later on Nov. 5, 22-year-old Octavio Sanches-Morales was robbed and killed on South F Street.
The proximity in both time and location helped authorities connect the crimes as well, records state.