A former head of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) wrote a letter asking for forgiveness from the family of an innocent minor whom he ordered murder, who received at least 32 stab wounds and blows to the head. The former criminal boss said he was tormented by the crime he committed.
Erick López Flores, aged 33, nicknamed ‘Mayimba’ who was the head of an MS-13 clique in Massachusetts, was sentenced this Monday to 33 years in prison for ordering the murder of the minor Herson Rivas, whom he believed was cooperating with the police, and whose body was found in a wooded area in 2018.
The letter that the feared ex-criminal wrote from a Rhode Island prison was submitted in a federal court in Boston shortly before his sentence was issued, the first to be imposed on six gang members accused of a murder that was perpetrated with “extreme atrocity and cruelty”.
This is part of what the letter said:
“I really want Herson’s family to know how bad I feel about killing their son Herson. I know you feel hurt and destroyed. I know I’m part of the reason. I am ashamed of what I did by helping to kill him. I know there is nothing in this world that I can say to Herson’s family to make them feel better.
I wish I could go back in time and not get in my car that night. I know that when I made that decision, I caused Herson’s death. He haunts me every day. I know that I deserve to be punished for being part of Herson’s murder and I will serve every day of my sentence knowing that.
When I think of Herson I think that he no longer has a life, not even one to be in prison, and I think of how I helped take his life… I know I can’t bring Herson back and I can’t change what I did, but I want do whatever it takes to give something to the world”.
However, that repentance is not read anywhere else in his court file. The accused and his accomplices confessed to the authorities that they planned in detail and killed Herson Rivas without touching his heart on July 2018.
The crime occurred after Rivas was tricked into a children’s park and while he was living with members of the ‘Sykos Locos Salvatruchos’ clique, he was subdued and taken to a wooded area, where he was brutally stabbed and beaten, in an attack authorized by López Flores because he mistakenly thought that Rivas was a police informer.
The body of the adolescent was left there and was found three days later, on August 2 of that year. The autopsy revealed that he suffered at least 32 stab wounds and had injuries to his skull.
It is anticipated that this week three others involved are prosecuted: Jonathan Tercero Yanes, alias ‘Desalmado’; Henri Salvador Gutiérrez, nicknamed ‘Perverse’; and Djavier Duggins, also known as ‘Haze’. The sentencing hearings of Marlos Reyes and Eliseo Vaquerano Cañas have not yet been scheduled.
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