ALABAMA - A Long Island woman accused of luring five young men to a park where four of them were then attacked and killed by MS-13 gang members was sentenced to decades in prison more than seven years after the murders took place. For years, La Mara Salvatrucha, a Central American-born gang, has been accused of recruiting young teenagers to conduct vile crimes across the United States, including in states such as Tennessee and New York.
Earlier this year, a MS-13 leader pleaded guilty in New York to a series of charges related to eight murders in the state. One by one, prosecutors in the U.S. have sentenced other people linked to the gang to lengthy times behind bars.
The list now includes Leniz Escobar, who according to prosecutors was a "critical player" at nearly every step of the April 2017 murders. U.S. Judge Joseph Bianco declared that Escobar "willingly and enthusiastically" helped plan and execute the killings, in which members armed with machetes, knives and tree limbs ambushed the victims in a park near Long Island.
Escobar, who was just 17 years old when the murders took place, was convicted in 2022 in one count of racketeering and four counts of murder in aid of racketeering. When convicted, Escobar falsely maintained to be a victim in the ambush and pleaded not guilty to the charges.
A court filing said Escobar tossed her cellphone from a moving vehicle, and also got rid of bloody clothing she had been wearing on the night of the murders.
While addressing family members of the victims at the Central Islip federal court, Escobar said she is reminded every day of the pain she has caused.
"All I can do is hurt," she said through tears. "Every breath reminds me that they are not here and their families are in pain. If I could trade places with them and take away that pain, I would," Escobar said.
Despite showing signs of repentance, parents and other relatives of the victims who spoke in court were not moved by Escobar's words. In fact, they were looking for a stricter sentence such as the death penalty.
"She does not deserve 50 or 60 years in prison. She deserves the death penalty," Bertha Ullaguari, the mother of 18-year-old Jorge Tigre, said in Spanish through a translator.
Escobar's lawyer was arguing for a shorter sentence in prison, noting that she was just 17 at the time of the murders and that she had already endured violence, sexual abuse, exploitation and human trafficking.
"From the time of her birth until April 2017, she had lived a horrible, terrible life," defense attorney Jesse Siegel said. "The best years of her life have been the last seven years in custody."
But prosecutors argued that even while in custody, Escobar continued to maintain strong ties to the street gang, even coordinating the beating of another female gang associate for violating the gang's code.
More than a dozen MS-13 gang members and associates have since been charged in connection with the attack. Escobar is the fifth to have been sentenced.
According to Steven Dudley, author of the book MS-13: The Making of America's Most Notorious Gang, there are around 10,000 MS-13 members in the United States operating in 40 states. Their strongholds are Los Angeles, New York and the Washington D.C. area.
In 2022, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele (from where the gang hails) launched a state of emergency (régimen de excepción) that has given his government almost free rein in its war against gangs like the MS-13.
As of October of last year, the Salvadoran government claims to have arrested 52,541 members of the MS-13 as well as 13,682 members of the Barrio 18 Sureños, and 10,741 members of the Barrio 18 Revolucionarios.
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