MS-13 trial witness: 'Thank God I managed to escape'

The only survivor of the alleged MS-13 gang killings of four young men in a Central Islip park in 2017 testified Monday that one of the attackers shouted "hack him" as he ran for his life. 

"They said "nobody move; whoever moves dies' and then they put us on our knees," said Elmer Alexander Artiaga-Ruiz, 22, previously a Ronkonkoma resident who took the stand in a federal court in Central Islip. "I ran because the first words they said was that we were going to die, they were going to kill us." 

Artiaga-Ruiz, who left Long Island days after the April 11, 2017 killing of his friends Jorge Tigre, 18; Michael Lopez, 20; Jefferson Villalobos, 18; and Justin Llivicura, 16, said he initially thought there was no way to escape when the attackers, whose faces were covered, surrounded him and his friends.

"I took off running and there were two people who started to follow me," he said, describing how he jumped a fence and a stone wall as he fled. "Thank God I managed to escape." 

Artiaga-Ruiz, who prosecutors said was marked for death by the gang for posing in photos posted on social media with clothing and hand gestures typical of MS-13, testified about his harrowing espape at the trial of Leniz Escobar, 22, the alleged gang associate who prosecutors say lured the victims to their deaths.

Escobar, whose social media handle "La Diablita" means "little devil," is charged with five counts including murder, conspiracy and racketeering, in connection with the fatal attack. She has pleaded not guilty and has been held in federal custody in Riverhead since her 2017 arrest. 

Assistant U.S. Attorney Megan Farrell, in the government's opening statement, said Escobar was a "devoted associate" of MS-13 whose boyfriend was a high-ranking member. 

"She shared in MS-13's desire to kill," said Farrell. "She planned these murders." 

Prosecutors say Escobar planned the attack after her friend Keyli Gomez showed her photos of Artiaga-Ruiz. She invited him to the park after telling him it was  "a good place to smoke" marijuana.  Prosecutors said Artiaga-Ruiz and his friends agreed to go and were smoking when armed gang members attacked them.

Over a dozen MS-13 gang members were armed with "machetes, knives, an ax and other weapons," Farrell said. 

"Only Alex was fast enough to get away," Farrell said, referring to Artiaga-Ruiz, adding: "As they were killed, they wailed in pain, piercing the otherwise empty park with their terrified screams." 

Members of the Tigre, Lopez and Llivicura families were in the courtroom as prosecutors showed a photo of the bodies inside the park the day after the killing. Tigre's mother and sister, as well as Lopez's mother, cried and clutched each other as the photo was briefly displayed. 

Outside the courthouse, Michael Lopez's father -- Carlos Lopez-- said he felt "bad, bad, bad" after hearing the testimony. "It's what he told me before. I don't know but I believe he had something to do with it. Why didn't he come looking for us? We have to wait for the rest of this testimony." 

After the killings, Escobar said in a phone call to her boyfriend that was recorded by law enforcement officers that "she did it to be happy and she was happy it happened," Farrell said. 

Escobar “bragged about her important role in the murders," Farrell said, and alluded to Artiaga-Ruiz's escape by saying "four individuals left on a train." 

Escobar later lied to Suffolk police detectives by painting herself as a victim of the attack and destroyed evidence by disposing of a bloody sweatshirt she wore during the killings and tossing her cell phone from a moving vehicle on Southern State Parkway while being followed by police, Farrell said. 

After Monday's proceedings, one of Escobar's attorneys, Jesse Siegel, said his client "absolutely" maintains her innocence, but declined to comment further. 

Artiaga-Ruiz was not a gang member but he and his friends were "just high school kids posing as gangsters to look tough and get attention," Farrell said. 

Artiaga-Ruiz testified that he posed making MS-13 gang signs because he thought it would  "draw the attention of women." 

He testified that after he fled the attack, he went home and eventually fell asleep. He never called 911, but the next day relayed what happened to the families of the then-thought-to-be-missing young men. He went with Lopez's brother and a friend back to the park and discovered the bodies of the four victims. He recorded video of the bodies and sent the footage to his sister, he said. 

"I felt really bad and thought at that moment the pain they must have felt," he said. 

One of Escobar's attorney Keith White, in his opening statement, said his client "didn't know anyone would be killed" and dismissed the government's reliance on recordings of Escobar's phone calls. "These are not confessions," White said. "These are pivots -- pivots from a teenage girl who knew she was in danger."

When she was on the phone with her "so-called boyfriend," who the government says was an MS-13 gang member, she felt "she was speaking to the MS-13" and said "what she had to say to him to feel safe," White said.

Artiaga-Ruiz, in his testimony through a Spanish-language interpreter, recalled that just before the attack began, the group sat smoking near a fallen tree and Escobar remarked about the moon.  "Leniz said it was beautiful that night ... we all put our attention on the moon and were saying how beautiful it was," he said.
 

By Nicole Fuller

nicole.fuller@newsday.com@NicoleFuller

Nicole Fuller is Newsday's senior criminal justice reporter. She began working at Newsday in 2012 and previously covered local government.