MS-13 member admits to taking part in two separate murders in 2016

Michael Johnson’s mother came face to face with one of his killers in court Tuesday, saying after Jonathan Hernandez admitted to murdering her son with other MS-13 members that he should spend the rest of his life behind bars.

“He was laughing. Did you see that smile on his face?” Arlene Burke said outside a federal courtroom in Central Islip, shortly after watching Hernandez take responsibility for her son’s January 2016 murder.

Hernandez, 25, pleaded guilty to racketeering while admitting to taking part in the murder of Johnson, 29, and the murder of 19-year-old Oscar Acosta three months later.

Hernandez also admitted to the attempted murder of suspected gang rivals in August 2016 and taking part in an MS-13 conspiracy to distribute cocaine and marijuana — other acts supporting the rackeetering charge.

“Being in a gang, see where it puts you?” Johnson’s stepfather, Ron Burke, said after court, dubbing Hernandez a “coward.”

Prosecutors said Hernandez used the street names “Travieso” and “Kraken” in his role as a member of a Sailors clique of MS-13.

The U.S. Attorney's Office said previously that Johnson's slaying in Brentwood on Jan. 28, 2016, was the first in a spree of seven murders stretching into 2017 that were committed in part by two brothers who allegedly led MS-13's Brentwood Sailors clique.

The killings included the September 2016 slayings of Brentwood High School students Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens.

Prosecutors said MS-13 members marked Johnson for death after seeing him at Jocorena Deli in Brentwood and claiming to recognize him as a member of the rival Bloods street gang.

The victim's mother said Tuesday after court that she knew he wasn't in a gang. But Johnson may have been wearing a clothing item that had the red color of the Bloods gang, and MS-13 members may have mistaken him as a rival for that reason, law enforcement sources previously told Newsday.

The gang used the guise of smoking marijuana to lure Johnson to a secluded area in the woods near Second Avenue before MS-13 members and associates hit Johnson with a baseball bat, stabbed him with a knife and hacked him with a machete, according to authorities.

Suffolk police recovered his body five days later.

More than six years later, Johnson's mother and stepfather remembered him Tuesday as someone who was so nice that "everybody was his family." Johnson, who also had a talent for basketball and football, had a part-time job in a neighborhood gas station until one day — the day of his murder — when the Central Islip man never came home from work, according to his family.

Months later, MS-13 members also used the promise of smoking marijuana to lure Acosta, whom they suspected of associating with the rival 18th Street gang, to a wooded area near a Brentwood elementary school on April 29, 2016.

Gang members beat the teenager and bound and gagged him before summoning cohorts that included Hernandez, according to authorities. They said the culprits put Acosta in a car trunk before driving him to a secluded area near an abandoned psychiatric hospital and fatally hacking him there.

On Tuesday, Hernandez also agreed that he fired a handgun at suspected rival gang members on Lukens Avenue in Brentwood on Aug. 10, 2016. He also admitted to taking part in a drug conspiracy between April 2016 and October 2017 in which prosecutors said he served as a street-level dealer and that was meant to enrich MS-13's coffers.

"Our client accepts his responsibility and is ready to move on to whatever comes next," one of Hernandez's lawyers, Michael Bachrach, said after court Tuesday.

Hernandez faces a penalty of up to life imprisonment at his September sentencing.