MS-13 leader Elias Serrano Bonilla sentenced to prison for Long Island attacks

A member of the Hempstead offshoot of a violent transnational gang was sentenced Tuesday to 17 years in prison for a machete attack in a turf battle over the use of a local soccer field, Nassau prosecutors said.

Elias Serrano Bonilla, 22, and two fellow Locos Salvatruchas MS-13 members were convicted of attacking eight people with knives and machetes at a Hempstead soccer field in October 2024 and at a Uniondale laundromat in December of that year.

“Elias Bonilla was the catalyst for several brazen public attacks by the Hempstead Locos Salvatruchas, which left almost a dozen of our residents seriously injured,” Nassau District Attorney Anne Donnelly said. “He and MS-13 tried to intimidate others through fear and force, but my office’s message is clear: gang violence in our communities is unacceptable, and we put such criminals in front of judges and behind bars.”

Bonilla pleaded guilty on July 22 to second-degree attempted murder, second-degree conspiracy and second-degree assault.

His co-conspirators, Pedro Martinez Velasquez, 19, and Kelvin Martinez, 20, were sentenced on April 30 to 12 years in state prison.

Bonilla, Velasquez and Martinez approached a group of men playing soccer at Kennedy Memorial Park in Hempstead around 4:30 p.m. on Oct. 20, 2024, prosecutors said.

According to Velasquez’s lawyer, Christopher Graziano, the dispute stemmed from the men playing soccer on a field that Bonilla and his crew felt was their territory.

Bonilla, whom prosecutors described as a “homeboy” or gang leader, was captured on surveillance video approaching the victims on the field.

The three men began punching and kicking the soccer players and then Velasquez pulled out a machete and hacked one of the victims in the left forearm, causing a deep cut, prosecutors said. Martinez wielded a knife and stabbed one of the players in the chest, authorities said.

Among the six victims on the field, ages 20 to 51, one man suffered a stab wound to the left shoulder, according to the district attorney’s office. Another man, who was stabbed in the ribs, lost his gallbladder and suffered damage to his liver and diaphragm, prosecutors said.

The three suspects fled in a fourth man’s car, according to investigators.

Police found a knife with an eagle-shaped handle etched with the letters “MS.”

About two months later, on Dec. 18, 2024, Bonilla, Velasquez and Martinez attacked again, this time outside the Uniondale Super Laundromat with pipes and a machete, authorities said.

Surveillance footage taken around 9 p.m. captured Bonilla identifying himself as an MS-13 member and threatening to kill men parked outside the laundromat. He punched a man as he got out of the front passenger seat of a parked car.

Video shows Martinez kick another man in the chest as another gang member attacks him with a machete, prosecutors said.

The victims suffered cuts all over their bodies.

Bonilla was not captured until Aug. 8 of last year, when Nassau County police and the FBI arrested him at his home in East Meadow.

Attorneys for Bonilla and Martinez did not respond to a request for comment. Graziano said Velasquez was “regretful for what happened.”

“He was mixed up with some people who had too much influence over him and he got too involved,” the lawyer said.