LOS ANGELES — MS-13 gang members in Los Angeles hacked to death seven people in the last two years, including a rival gang member who was dismembered and had his heart cut out by six MS-13 soldiers in the Angeles National Forest for defacing the gang’s graffiti, federal authorities alleged in an indictment unsealed Tuesday.
Twenty-two people allegedly affiliated with the gang’s Fulton clique in the San Fernando Valley were indicted by a grand jury on racketeering charges that include nearly 200 criminal acts, committed across several states over nine years.
The sweeping, 78-page indictment marks the latest salvo between California law enforcement and the notorious gang, which was formed decades ago in Los Angeles and has since become a bogeyman for President Donald Trump, who evokes its macabre killings in his rhetoric against illegal immigration.
Four people were killed in the Angeles National Forest by members of the Fulton clique wielding machetes, baseball bats and knives, the indictment alleges. Along with a slaying in the Malibu hills and another in Whitsett Fields Park in North Hollywood — the clique’s “stronghold,” prosecutors said — the six killings were committed by gang members hoping to gain entry into or advance within the clique’s ranks, according to the indictment.
Sixteen of the 22 people indicted are charged in connection with those six slayings, which authorities called so “heinous, cruel or depraved” that the defendants are eligible for the death penalty. Prosecutors have not said whether they intend to seek it. READ MORE
