NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- An MS-13 gang member was extradited to the U.S. from El Salvador on Friday — more than two years after he was charged in the 2016 machete death of a 15-year-old boy on Long Island, prosecutors said.
Eduardo Portillo, 23, who previously lived in both Central Islip and Brentwood, was charged with murdering Javier Castillo, 15, of Central Islip, in May 2018, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York said in a release Friday.
Portillo was arrested in El Salvador — to which he fled after Castillo’s death — in February 2019, the attorney’s office said. El Salvador’s Supreme Court of Justice authorized his extradition on Oct. 6, and he arrived in the U.S. Friday morning, prosecutors said.
“Today’s extradition of defendant Portillo demonstrates the resolve of law enforcement to bring to justice all gang members who commit violent crimes in our district, no matter where in the world they may run and try to hide,” Acting U.S. Attorney Seth DuCharme said in a statement.
“I hope the extradition of the defendant and his prosecution in a U.S. court will bring some measure of closure to the family of the young victim,” he added.
Prosecutors said Castillo was a member of the 18th Street gang, a rival of MS-13. In October 2016, Portillo and a group of fellow MS-13 members allegedly invited Castillo to Freeport to smoke pot.
When Castillo got there, they lured him into an “isolated marsh area” in Cow Meadow Park and “[took] turns hacking him with a machete,” according to prosecutors.
The group buried Castillo’s body after he died, prosecutors said. Law enforcement officers only found his body a year later, according to the release.
Portillo, who has also been charged with racketeering offenses and narcotics trafficking, faces up to life in prison if he is convicted, the release said. His attorney information wasn’t immediately available Friday.