MS-13 member pleads guilty to killing fellow gang member

By Robert E. KesslerRobert.Kessler@newsday.comJuly 22, 2019

A member of MS-13 pleaded guilty Monday to killing a fellow member and to the shooting of a rival gang member when he was the 16-year-old leader of a chapter of the violent street gang.

Carlos Argueta, now 20, admitted his role in the murder of gang member Jose Pena in June 2016, and in the attempted murder of an unnamed member of a rival gang, known as the Goon Squad, in January 2016.

“I gave the instructions for it to be done…he was stabbed and he was dead. He was cooperating with the law,” Argueta said in Spanish in describing the Pena killing to Visiting Circuit Court Judge Joseph Bianco at federal court in Central Islip.

Argueta, of Brentwood, showed no emotion throughout his plea to both racketeering for the murder of Pena and the attempted murder of the Goon Squad member, as well as the use of a firearm in the shooting of the rival gang member.

Argueta, who was known by the street names of Violento, Desorden and Dylan, was the leader of what was known as the Freeport Locos Salvatruchas clique of MS-13, though it operated mainly in Suffolk, according to court papers and sources. Desorden means disorder in Spanish, and Violento, violent.

Pena was killed because he was believed to be a police informant and gay, according to officials, both violations of the street gang’s code. Argueta received approval from the leadership of the gang in El Salvador to kill Pena, officials have said.

Pena, 18, was lured into the woods on the grounds of Pilgrim State Hospital in Brentwood by Argueta and several other MS-13 members and stabbed and slashed to death with knives, officials said.

An image admitted into evidence in court shows Carlos Argueta. Credit: U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of New York

Paul Scotti, assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District, said in court that Pena was with Argueta and other MS-13 members near the Brentwood Library when they got into a confrontation with members of the Goon Squad. Scotti is prosecuting the case along with another Eastern District prosecutor, John Durham.

Argueta took out a .45-caliber semi-automatic from his waistband and shot an unidentified member of the rival gang, who was specifically taunting him, four times in the torso, according to court records. The victim survived. Afterwards, Argueta suspected that Pena had informed the police about the incident.

Argueta faces up to life in prison when he is sentenced, plus a mandatory 10 years on the gun charge. He also faces mandatory deportation to his native El Salvador.

“It’s a tragic end to a tragedy,” Argueta’s lawyer, Glenn Obedin, said after the plea.

Durham and Scotti declined to comment.

Though the crime was committed in June, Pena’s body was not discovered until October, a month after the September slaying of two Brentwood High school students, Nisa Mickens, 15, and Kayla Cuevas, 16. Other members of MS-13 have been charged in the killing of the teenagers.

The brutal slaying of the two girls set off a national furor with both President Donald Trump and then Attorney General Jeff Sessions vowing to crush the gang.

At the time of the Pena killing, Argueta was out on bail on state court charges in the shooting of the Goon Squad member, after an initial arrest by Suffolk police, officials have said. The Goon Squad is neither a national nor international gang, but a loosely affiliated group of people in the Brentwood area, sources have said.

Pena was also out on bail in connection with the shooting of the Goon Squad member, officials said.

“Argueta admitted that while free on bail for shooting a gang rival in broad daylight outside a public library less than six months earlier, he planned and carried out the vicious murder of a fellow gang member,” U.S. Attorney for the Easten District Richard Donoghue said in a statement. “This office, together with the FBI’s Long Island Gang Task Force, will continue working tirelessly to eradicate MS-13 and hold its members accountable for their senseless violence.”

Argueta, while he was the leader of his clique, was only 16 years and six months old when he shot the Goon Squad member and a month short of 17 when he took part in the Pena killing, court papers said.

Federal prosecutors successfully argued to Bianco that Argueta should be treated as an adult because as a juvenile he would have to spend only five years in a juvenile prison facility before being released.

Bianco agreed, saying that given Argueta’s history of violence, loyalty to MS-13, and character, it was unlikely that he would be successfully rehabilitated after a few years in a juvenile facility.

Three other members of MS-13 have already had court hearings in the Pena killing after investigations by the FBI’s Long Island Gang Task force. Two have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing. One was sentenced to 25 years in prison, according to court papers.