Federal prosecutors have charged 15 more members of the notorious MS-13 gang as part of their sweeping probe into a string of brutal murders in Queens — including a woman who lured a 17-year-old boy into a deadly ambush in Kissena Park.
The victim, Andy Peralta, was beaten, stabbed and strangled April 13, 2018, by a group of assailants who thought a tattoo of a crown on his chest meant he was a member of the Latin Kings.
On Wednesday, federal prosecutors charged Leyla Carranza in connection with Peralta’s killing.
She was dating one of the killers, Juan Amaya-Ramirez, and she agreed to lure Peralta to his death by chatting him up on social media and convincing him to come to the park for a romantic interlude, prosecutors said.
When he got there, Amaya-Ramirez and two others were waiting. After they killed him, they posed with his body and flashed MS-13 hand signs, prosecutors said.
Carranza, 22, of Richmond Va., joined 12 new defendants in the feds’ case against MS-13, including Edenilson Velasquez Larin, who went by the nicknames “Agresor,” “Saturno,” and “Paco,” and is described as a national MS-13 leader.
Seven other MS-13 members, including Amaya-Ramirez, have already been charged in an earlier version of the indictment.
The feds linked several of the new defendants to the murder of Victor Alvarenga, 26, who was killed around the corner from his Flushing home in November 2018 because he falsely claimed to be a “homeboy” of MS-13′s Hollywood Locos Salvatruchas clique, prosecutors allege.
Gang members were also linked to two additional murders — the broad-daylight subway killing of Abel Mosso, 20, in February 2019, and the September 2020 fatal shooting of Eric Monge as he sat near a parked car near his Queens home.
Court documents also detail a string of other crimes, including attempted murders, drug trafficking and conspiracies to rub out rivals.
“The murders and other crimes of violence allegedly committed by these defendants were brutal, cold-blooded, and utterly senseless,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said. “We will not relent until this transnational criminal organization, its leaders, members, and associates are held accountable for the extreme violence and other criminal activity that they have perpetrated in our communities.”