Teen found guilty in 2010 machete slaying

It took a Nassau jury less than an hour Tuesday to convict a Hempstead teenager of second-degree murder on charges that he stabbed a Westbury man to death with a machete in November 2010.

Prosecutor Mike Walsh said in court that Pedro Santos, 17, and his friend Yan Cifuentes, 15, attacked their victim, Yunior Orlando Maldonado, on a Hempstead street because they believed he was in a rival gang.

Santos will face 25 years to life in prison when Nassau County Court Judge David Sullivan sentences him on Jan. 18. Cifuentes, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder last month, faces 15 years to life in prison because he was a minor at the time of the stabbing, prosecutors said.

Walsh said Santos and Cifuentes, both members of the violent 18th Street gang, attacked Maldonado because they believed he was in the rival gang MS13. But Walsh said they were mistaken.

At trial, Santos' lawyer, Greg Madey of Mineola, said that while Santos was there and was carrying a machete, he did not take part in the murder.