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MS-13 Prosecutors told a federal jury this week that members lured victims to remote mountain locations north of Los Angeles and murdered them in brutal initiation rituals to test loyalty and earn status within the gang.
Between 2017 and 2019, gang members killed four people in the woods outside L.A., Deputy District Attorney Eric Sidle said in federal court Tuesday. Los Angeles Times. Five alleged MS-13 members on trial are also charged with two additional murders in Van Nuys and North Hollywood.
Siddall told the jury, “The more brutal the murder, the more respect will be earned.”
MS-13, which was founded by Salvadoran immigrants in Los Angeles four decades ago, has since expanded into an international criminal organization, partly controlled by leaders imprisoned in Central America.
Prosecutors allege that around 2016, an influx of gang members from El Salvador brought “Salvadoran rules”, requiring new recruits to commit murder to prove their loyalty.
The goal, Siddal said, was to be recognized as a “homeboy” or full member.
Defense lawyers argued that the prosecution’s case depended on the testimony of eight cooperating witnesses who confessed to multiple murders in exchange for lighter sentences.
One compared the defendants to “child soldiers” who grew up amid extreme violence. Another said his client “did what he had to do” to survive. “If you fail to obey an order to participate in a murder, you’re next,” the lawyer said.
Meanwhile, prosecutors described the defendants as “sleazy racketeers but prolific killers” who extorted money from small-time street vendors and focused primarily on killing enemies or traitors.
20-year-old Alvin “Winnie the Pooh” Hernandez was murdered after gang leaders accused him of falsely claiming MS-13 membership. Eleven men took turns attacking him with knives near a deserted helipad in the Angeles National Forest. A gang leader reportedly told him, “The Grim Reaper has just taken you.”
In another case, Brian Andino, a 16-year-old student at Panorama High School in Honduras, was lured to Lopez Canyon above Sylmar under the pretext of smoking marijuana. Six members of MS-13 ambushed and murdered him using a garrote, baseball bats, and a serrated knife called the “Gut Ripper”.
The same leader, Roberto Corrado Ortiz, was killed again in 2018 after 19-year-old Roger Chavez was shot to death in the mountains above Malibu after Chavez posted a Snapchat video showing handprints from a rival gang, prosecutors said.
However, not all killings took place in remote areas.
In December 2018, 22-year-old Osvaldo Hernandez was shot near his family’s Van Nuys apartment after MS-13 members spotted him in an alley marked with rival graffiti. Prosecutors said the same group killed two more people, including a homeless man they mistook for a member of a rival gang.
“His biggest sin was sleeping in their park,” Siddall said. “Their park. Like they own it.”
If convicted, the defendants face up to life in prison. The jury began deliberations on Wednesday.