MS-13 member Omar Antonio Villalta sentenced to 55 years in prison for 2017 quadruple homicides

An MS-13 gang member from Central Islip was sentenced Wednesday to 55 years in federal prison for his role in planning and executing the 2017 hacking killings of four young men in a Central Islip park.

U.S. District Judge Gary R. Brown sentenced Omar Antonio Villalta, 29, who is also known as "Anticristo," at the federal courthouse in Central Islip — not far from where victims Jorge Tigre, 18; Michael Lopez Banegas, 20; Jefferson Villalobos, 18; and Justin Llivicura, 16, were killed on April 11, 2017.

Villalta pleaded guilty in 2023 to racketeering in connection with the Central Islip killings and the July 3, 2017 murder of Marvin Rivera Guevara in Charlottsville, Virginia, where he fled after the four young men were killed on Long Island.

Villalta is a member of the Guanacos Lil Cycos Salvatruchas clique of MS-13, federal prosecutors said.

"My office and our law enforcement partners have worked endlessly to hold MS-13 accountable for their unspeakable crimes and the harm they’ve caused to countless victims and their loved ones," U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. said in a statement. "This sentencing and others demonstrate our relentless pursuit to dismantle MS-13 and other violent criminal organizations in totality."

As Newsday has reported, the four victims were lured to a park by MS-13 associates Leniz Escobar, also known as "La Diablita," the girlfriend of a high-ranking member, and her friend, Keyli Gomez, with the promise of smoking marijuana.

At Escobar’s 2022 trial, cooperating witness Sergio Vladimir Segovia-Pineda testified that Villalta, who had the rank of "homeboy" in the gang because he had previously killed, informed him and a group of other young men who were hanging out inside a small hut that the gang was going to kill them imminently, Newsday reported then.

Villalta had a backpack filled with knives, blades and machetes and instructed fellow gang members to take a weapon, and if there weren’t enough, to use tree limbs to attack the victims, Segovia-Pineda said then.

The victims, who the gang falsely perceived as rival gang members, were attacked with machetes, knives, an ax, clubs and a chisel by more than a dozen members and associates of the gang, prosecutors have said.

Villalta fled to Virginia after the Central Islip killings, prosecutors said. Days after starting work at a pizzeria, Villalta reported to other gang members, including the leader of the Guanacos clique, that his co-worker, Marvin Rivera Guevara, had flashed a gang sign of the 18th Street gang, an MS-13 rival, prosecutors said.

“Villalta was given authorization to kill the victim and a plan was quickly developed to carry out the murder,” prosecutors said in a news release.

On the night of July 3, 2017, an MS-13 member who Villalta worked with at the pizzeria “convinced the victim to drive with him to a remote location under the guise of smoking marijuana and meeting women,” the news release said.

But once they got to the woods, prosecutors said in the news release, “Villalta and other MS-13 members forced the victim at gunpoint deeper into the woods where they attacked him with a machete and knives. Villalta and the others then threw the victim’s body off a nearby bridge into the river below.”

Villalta’s co-defendant in the Central Islip killings, Josue Portillo, was also sentenced to 55 years in prison, while co-defendants Escobar and Freiry Martinez got 50 years in prison. Co-defendants Anderson Sanchez received 32 years’ imprisonment and Alexis Hernandez was sentenced to 29 years in prison. Gomez, who testified against her onetime friend Escobar, received 12 years.

By Nicole Fuller

nicole.fuller@newsday.com@NicoleFuller

Nicole Fuller is Newsday's senior criminal justice reporter. She began working at Newsday in 2012 and previously covered local government.