Hempstead MS-13 members hit with 12-year sentences for attacks on 8 with machete, knives

Two MS-13 gang members will spend a dozen years in prison after a Nassau County judge sentenced both Thursday for separate attacks using a machete and other weapons on eight victims, including six as they played soccer in a Hempstead park, Nassau County District Attorney Donnelly said.

Kelvin Martinez and Pedro Martinez Velasquez, both 19, pleaded guilty in February to the attacks — one in October 2024 on soccer players at Kennedy Memorial Park in Hempstead, and the other that December outside a Uniondale laundromat.

On Thursday, both men were sentenced to 12 years in prison followed by five years post release supervision, Donnelly said in a news release.

The district attorney identified both men as members of MS-13’s Hempstead Locos Salvatruchas gang, said they took part "in a series of brutal knife and machete attacks in public spaces that seriously injured eight people."

Martinez's defense attorney, Garden City-based Joseph LoPiccolo, told Newsday late Thursday his client "is a bad example of what happens when the gangs put their influence onto people who are just trying to make it on Long Island."

The district attorney's office said that on Oct. 20, 2024 at about 4:25 p.m. Martinez, Velasquez and other co-conspirators attacked six people playing soccer at Kennedy Memorial Park in Hempstead, The pair jumped a fence and began punching and kicking some of the victims. Martinez then stabbed a victim in the chest while Velasquez hit another in the left forearm with a machete. One of the victims needed surgery to remove his gallbladder and repair his diaphragm and liver, after he was stabbed in the abdomen, prosecutors said. Injuries among the other five victims, from ages 20 to 51, included deep lacerations.

Martinez and Velasquez fled the scene in a co-conspirator’s vehicle, in which authorities executing a search warrant later discovered "a knife with an eagle-shaped handle with the letters ‘MS’ etched into it," Donnelly’s office said.

Less than two months after the soccer field attack, Martinez and Velasquez were among a group who identified themselves as MS-13 gang members and used pipes and a machete on attacks on two people "parked outside Super Laundromat in Uniondale," prosecutors said. Martinez kicked a victim as he tried to run, then held him as another gang member "swung and struck the victim with a machete multiple times," the release said. The attacks left the victims with deep lacerations.

About 15 minutes after the incident, Martinez and Velasquez were arrested a few blocks from the scene.

Martinez and Velasquez pleaded guilty on Feb. 24 before Judge Joy Watson at Nassau County Court in Mineola to second-degree conspiracy, second-degree attempted murder and second-degree assault, Donnelly said.