Sixteen people from a group associated with the New York City Hispanic gang “Trinitarios” were indicted on broad federal and state charges, including a series of high-level murders, drug trafficking and robberies.
The sixteen members and associates of the group “Own Every Dollar” (OED) allegedly committed five homicides, 12 attempted murders, carried out a series of armed robberies and trafficked drugs, including fentanyl, over the past four years, authorities said.
The violent team is suspected of controlling the territory in Washington Heights in Manhattan, as well as parts of the Bronx and Queens, and is behind a series of robberies that resulted in the theft of more than $4 million worth of expensive watches and jewelry from patrons at restaurants and bars.
“These people lived under a brutal code of street violence, where weapons were taken from and fired recklessly and fired indiscriminately, where innocent lives were ignored, where families and neighborhoods were left traumatized and shattered,” New York Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said in a statement.
“The Trinitarians are a notorious Dominican street gang founded on Rikers Island in the early 1990s 1990,” he said New York Post.
Homicide victims include Héctor Cruz (2019) and Jeffrey Sánchez (2021). “Over the last four years, OED has wreaked havoc in this city,” US Attorney Damian Williams said at a press conference yesterday.
In another high-profile crime, two suspected gang members attacked people eating at the Upper East Side restaurant “Philippe Chow,” demanding their jewelry while pointing guns at them, according to the state indictment. filed by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
One of the suspects, Justin Deaza, ended up firing a round during that robbery of the 15 September 2019, injuring one of the clients in the leg, prosecutors alleged. . The shooting caused a group of horrified diners to flee the exclusive Chinese restaurant, the press reported at the time.
Last week two “Trinitarios” gang members were found guilty of ordering the homicide in a warehouse in El Bronx fifteen-year-old Lesandro “Junior” Guzmán Feliz, one of the most brutal crimes in New York history