MS-13 gang member pleads guilty in 2014 Brentwood killing

An MS-13 gang member on Wednesday pleaded guilty in federal court in the 2014 slaying of a Brentwood man who prosecutors said was executed because the gang suspected him of murdering some of its members in El Salvador.

Edwin Amaya-Sanchez, 30, said he and other gang members planned the killing, and then he drove them to the neighborhood where Jose Lainez-Murcia lived and they shot him on July 24, 2014.

Speaking through a Spanish interpreter, Amaya-Sanchez admitted in court that the two MS-13 gang members were armed with guns and he dropped them off in his 1995 Toyota Corolla.

“They got out of my car. They went to his house. They waited for him to come out, and they shot at him,” Amaya-Sanchez told U.S. District Judge Joseph Bianco in Central Islip.

Amaya-Sanchez said after he heard the gun shots, the two men got back into his black Corolla and he drove away. Lainez-Murcia, a landscaper, was found shot to death inside his car.

Amaya-Sanchez pleaded guilty to brandishing and discharge of firearms during crimes of violence in the killing.

Prosecutors said Amaya-Sanchez worked with Lainez-Murcia and knew where he lived, what time he left for work, and the type of car he drove.

“When Lainez-Murcia left the house and entered his car, the MS-13 members approached and fired multiple times with the 9-mm handguns, killing him,” according to a news release issued Wednesday by the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District.

Amaya-Sanchez, an immigrant from El Salvador who prosecutors said entered the country illegally, faces up to life in prison at his sentencing, scheduled for Oct. 17. He remains in federal custody.

One of the men who shot and killed Lainez-Murcia is dead and the other is in prison, said Assistant U.S. Attorney John Durham.

At Wednesday’s proceeding, Durham told the judge that had the case gone to trial, his office would be able to establish Amaya-Sanchez’s guilt with evidence that included video surveillance, telephone records and witnesses who would testify for the government.

A group of seven people, including two young children, came to court for the proceeding. One of the adults said they are friends of Amaya-Sanchez, but he and others declined to comment.

MS-13, or La Mara Salvatrucha, is an international criminal organization whose leadership is based in El Salvador and Honduras, but has thousands of members across the United States, including on Long Island and Queens, federal authorities said.

MS-13 is the largest and the most violent street gang on Long Island.

Charges against Amaya-Sanchez were part of an indictment of more than a dozen alleged MS-13 members on a variety of crimes. The Eastern District — which covers Nassau, Suffolk, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island — has prosecuted and convicted “hundreds” of MS-13 members for crimes ranging from murder to racketeering, according to the news release.

In the last eight years, MS-13 members have been charged with carrying out more than 45 murders, including the brutal slayings of two Brentwood high school students in 2016 and the beating of four young men whose mutilated bodies were found in a Central Islip Park in 2017.