CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. (WCBS 880/AP) — A federal jury heard opening statements Monday as the trial got underway for a Long Island woman accused of luring four young men to their slaughter by more than a dozen members of the MS-13 street gang.
Prosecutors say Leniz Escobar helped orchestrate the 2017 massacre as a teenage associate of the gang before falsely claiming to be a victim in the ambush.
Escobar has pleaded not guilty to racketeering charges in the four deaths that prosecutors described as "a horrific frenzy of violence" involving machetes, knives and tree limbs in a Central Islip park.
A message was sent to her defense attorneys seeking comment.
MS-13 had been seeking to settle a score, prosecutors allege, and believed the young victims to be members of the rival 18th Street Gang. The victims' families have denied that any of the slain men were in a gang.
Prosecutors allege that Escobar, who was 17 at the time, was seeking to curry favor with MS-13 and alerted its members to the victims' location in a wooden area. Under MS-13 rules, the killings had been "pre-authorized" by gang leadership, prosecutors said, and contributors to the carnage stood to gain membership or ascend the organization's ranks.
Authorities said Escobar later tossed her cellphone from a moving vehicle — as well as a SIM card that had been removed and damaged so badly law enforcement couldn't recover its contents.
"Additionally, Escobar discarded the bloody clothing that she had been wearing on the night of the murders," prosecutors wrote in a court filing.
A fifth victim, who escaped the massacre, took the stand Monday.
The young man testified in Spanish that he was told by Escobar, also known as "Little Devil" or "Diablita," to pick her up with his best friend and that they were going to smoke pot in the woods.
When they got to the wooded area in Central Islip, the man said a group of eight or nine suddenly ran through a hole in the fence carrying machetes and told them "Get on your knees, you are going to die."
The man testified he decided to run for his life, jumping on a fallen tree before jumping over a fence.
He kept running until he came to a residential area.
He said for awhile two men chased him, but he managed to lose them.
Defense attorneys say Escobar knew nothing of the plan and did not lure the men to the woods. Instead she claims she thought she was going to go to the woods to smoke pot.
The trial is expected to last about four weeks.
MS-13, also known as La Mara Salvatrucha, recruits young teenagers from El Salvador and Honduras, though many gang members were born in the U.S. The gang has been blamed for dozens of killings since January 2016 across a wide swath of Long Island.
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