Anthony Gutiérrez Meza, a Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang member, pleaded guilty to the “cruel execution” of a rival after luring him to a Long Island (NY) park with the promise of smoking marijuana, prosecutors reported yesterday. .
Gutiérrez Meza, 25, had been charged with manslaughter for his role in the “brutal” beating of Greenlawn’s Estiven Abrego Gómez with a bat in 2016. He has now admitted to prosecutors that he lured the 18-year-old victim by sending her a message Facebook on August 19, 2016, asking him to meet at the Greenlawn Park baseball field and smoke marijuana.
Early in the morning of August 20, the two young men entered the park together. Soon after, other members of MS-13 appeared and began walking toward the victim, he said. New York Post. Realizing that he had been set up, Gómez tried to flee, but was punched to the ground by one of the unidentified assailants.
Meza and the other gang members then took turns hitting Gomez with a baseball bat. They also “stabbed and sliced” him with knives and “cut him with a machete” until they were sure he was dead.
Prosecutors said both of Gomez’s hands were nearly amputated by her killers. Meza and the other men then left the mutilated corpse in the park. The “nearly unrecognizable” body was discovered later that morning by a man walking his dog who called 911.
Meza is due back in court on July 11 for his sentencing. He faces up to 22 years in prison for his role in the murder. He is the third member of MS-13 to plead guilty to Gomez’s brutal murder, following Elmer Santos Contreras in August 2019 and Carlos López Campos in April 2021. Prosecutors believe gang rivalry was the motive for the killing. .
Long Island and Queens are two of the areas with the largest Mara Salvatrucha presence in the US, where dozens of murders and disappearances are attributed to it. The Central American origin group is associated with recruiting young men and women, mostly of Latino origin.
In April Carlos Portillo was sentenced after being found guilty in connection with the machete murder of teenager Julio César Gonzales Espantzay in Massapequa Preserve, Long Island (NY).
In March Marvin Moralez, an MS-13 member known as “Little Chucky,” was sentenced to between 23 years and life in prison after pleading guilty to his role in the murder of an alleged rival teenager and the attempted murder of a police detective. Nassau County (NY) Police.
In January Carlos Guerra pleaded guilty to killing two men in New York to rise through the ranks in the MS-13 gang. In August José Jonathan Guevara Castro was extradited from El Salvador to New York as a suspect in the brutal murder of a member of a rival gang on Long Island, federal prosecutors announced.
In July Eduardo Portillo, another MS-13 gang member extradited from El Salvador to New York, was sentenced to 25 years in prison by a federal judge after pleading guilty to helping kill a 15-year-old rival with a machete after luring him into a secluded park on Long Island.
In May 2022, Erasmo Humberto Lima Martínez, alias “Tun Tun”, also a member of the dangerous Mara Salvatrucha gang, committed suicide in a federal prison in Brooklyn (NYC).
Previously, in April of last year, the young Leniz Escobar, who called herself “La diablita”, was found guilty in connection with brutal homicides by the Mara Salvatrucha gang in New York.