Freeport MS-13 gang member sentenced to 42 years for pair of hacking deaths

A federal judge sentenced an MS-13 member Tuesday in Central Islip to 42 years in prison for luring two Long Island residents to secluded locations in Freeport and helping hack them to death.

Kevin Cuevas Del Cid, 26, pleaded guilty last year to a related racketeering charge before U.S. District Judge Joan Azrack and also admitted his role in the hacking deaths of Kerin Pineda, 20, and Javier Castillo, 15. He had faced life in prison.

Del Cid, a Freeport resident and a member of the Sailors clique, said he participated in the killings to raise his status in the MS-13 organization. He also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute cocaine and marijuana. Revenue from the drug sales would be used to buy more drugs, weapons and ammunition, Del Cid admitted when he pleaded guilty. Some of the proceeds would also be wired to gang members in El Salvador.

Pineda and Castillo were targeted by MS-13, designated as an transnational criminal organization by the U.S. Justice Department, because its members believed they belonged to the rival 18th Street Gang, prosecutors said.

"Today, the defendant faces justice for his role in the brutal murder of two innocent victims, young men who were targeted and tortured by the MS-13 street gang," Joseph Nocella, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement announcing the sentence.

Del Cid’s Manhattan-based attorney, Marion Seltzer, did not return a request for comment.

According to prosecutors, Del Cid created a fake Facebook profile of a young woman to communicate with Pineda. Pineda believed he was meeting the woman in May 2016 when he went to a secluded, wooded area near the Merrick-Freeport border. Instead, he was surrounded and attacked by Del Cid and other MS-13 members, who took turns hacking and slashing him with machetes.

His body was then buried in a hole that had been dug earlier, in anticipation of the surprise attack. Del Cid is the first of six defendants in the Pineda killing who have pleaded guilty, to be sentenced for the crime.

According to prosecutors, Sailors clique members convinced Castillo, a Central Islip resident, to go with them to Freeport — 30 miles west — to smoke marijuana in October 2016. Del Cid and other gang members took Castillo to an isolated marsh in Cow Meadow Park in Freeport, then attacked him with machetes. They then dug a hole and buried Castillo’s body, which would be found a year later.

More than a half dozen MS-13 members have been charged and pleaded guilty in connection with the killing of Castillo, the Justice Department said.

Del Cid, who was 16 years old at the time of the Pineda and Castillo murders, initially was charged as a juvenile in 2020. The government later filed a motion to try Del Cid as an adult, which was approved by a federal judge. Del Cid is a native of El Salvador who entered the United States illegally, authorities said.