CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. (1010 WINS) — An MS-13 gang associate was sentenced to 25 years in prison for his role in the 2016 machete death of a 15-year-old boy in Freeport, the Department of Justice said Tuesday.
Eduardo Portillo, also known as "Firuli" and "Tito," pleaded guilty in September 2021 to racketeering and admitted to taking part in Javier Castillo's murder and narcotics trafficking on behalf of MS-13, a violent transnational criminal organization.
The 25-year-old had been arrested in El Salvador and extradited to the U.S. to face these charges.
Federal prosecutors said Portillo and other MS-13 members targeted Castillo because he was believed to be a member of the 18th Street gang, one of MS-13' principal rivals.
On Oct. 16, 2016, Portillo — who was friendly with Castillo — and other Brentwood-based members of the Sailors Locos Salvatruchas Westside (Sailors) clique of the MS-13 convinced Castillo, who lived in Central Islip, to go with them to Freeport to smoke marijuana.
Once there, officials said they lured Castillo to an isolated marsh area in Cow Meadow Park, where Portillo and his co-conspirators attacked Castillo, taking turns hacking him to death with a machete. Afterward, the MS-13 members dug a hole and buried Castillo's body.
Castillo's brother told the Suffolk County Police Department that he was told by a person who had ties with the MS-13 to stop looking for Castillo because he was already "gone and buried," prosecutors said. The victim's body was found a year later.
With Portillo's sentence, U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said he has learned there are "very serious consequences" to his actions.
"That the victim in this case was a 15-year-old boy is all the more tragic, and it is my hope that dogged work of law enforcement in tracking down the defendant in El Salvador, his extradition to the Eastern District of New York, and the decades the defendant will spend in prison, brings some measure of closure to the family of the young victim," he said.
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