NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — A Long Island MS-13 gang member was sentenced to more than 27 years in prison for his role in the murder of a rival crew member, among other gang-related activities, authorities said Tuesday.
The 25-year-old, Nelson Argueta-Quintanilla who went by “Mendigo,” along with several other MS-13 members, murdered Oscar Acosta in 2016 and left his body on the grounds of an abandoned psychiatric hospital.
Acosta used to be part of MS-13 but had joined a rival crew. Argueta-Quintanilla and his accomplices caught Acosta off-guard at a wooded area near an elementary school where he was going to meet a friend. There, they knocked him unconscious by hitting him multiple times with a tree branch.
Eventually, more members of the gang arrived and they decided to move Acosta to a more isolated area, tying his hands and feet together and putting him in the trunk of a car to take him to a secluded wooded area of the abandoned psychiatric hospital.
When they got into the woods, the MS-13 gang members took turns striking Acosta with a machete before putting him in a shallow grave and fleeing the area. His body was found by law enforcement officials searching for a different MS-13 murder victim.
Argueta-Quintanilla also engaged in several other gang-related activities including racketeering and drug dealing.
“Demonstrating the defendant’s complete disregard for human life, today’s sentence is a fitting punishment for a brutal murder followed by another reckless shooting,” said U.S. Attorney Breon Peace. “This Office and our law enforcement partners remain committed to holding violent actors, including gang members, accountable for the fear, destruction, and death they bring to our communities.”
Argueta-Quintanilla was arrested in 2018. He pleaded guilty to the charges in September.
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