John Jefferson
Leniz Escobar (U.S. Attorney’s Office). Background: The location in New York where three teens and a 20-year-old man were hacked to death (PIX11).
An MS-13 gang member nicknamed “Diablita” will spend decades in prison for “willingly and enthusiastically” helping plan and carry out the machete-hacking deaths of three men and a 16-year-old boy at a Long Island park.
Leniz Escobar, 24, learned her fate on Tuesday in the murders of Justin Llivicura, 16, Michael Lopez, 20, Jorge Tigre, 18, and Jefferson Villalobos, 18, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced in a press release. Escobar was convicted in 2022 of racketeering, including predicate acts of murder, conspiracy to murder rival gang members and obstruction of justice, and murder in aid of racketeering.
“The defendant demonstrated her allegiance to the MS-13 gang by luring four young men to their slaughter,” said Breon Peace, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, in the press release. “Today’s significant sentence reflects not only the seriousness of her conduct but also the consequences of her actions including the terror and suffering experienced by the victims, and the life-altering grief that their families continue to suffer. It is my hope that the justice meted out today will provide some comfort to those who lost loved ones to this senseless gang violence.”
As Law&Crime reported, the bloodshed happened at Central Islip Park in April 2017. The five victims were lured there thinking they were there for a hangout to smoke marijuana but were soon surrounded by over a dozen MS-13 gang members. One would-be murder victim managed to escape before the four other victims were beaten and hacked to death with tree limbs, machetes, and knives in what federal prosecutors described in court papers as a “horrific frenzy of violence.”
During the massacre, Escobar got on her knees as well, pretending to be one of the intended victims. Her clothes from that night were soaked in blood. She later disposed of them and her cellphone from a moving car in a failed effort to conceal her involvement.
The mutilated bodies of the four were found stacked on top of one another near a children’s playground and soccer field the following evening.
The then 22-year-old victim who escaped lived to testify in court against Escobar.
“Eight or nine covered their faces with sweaters, told us to get down on our knees. They had weapons … machetes,” the survivor said through a translator during Escobar’s trial, according to a record of his testimony reported by CBS News. “I jumped a fence and stone wall, ran for my life. One shouted behind me, ‘Hack him!’ Thank God I managed to get away.”
Escobar and co-defendant Keyli Gomez, who pleaded guilty to racketeering charges and is awaiting sentencing, instigated the ambush after seeing the victims “flashing MS-13 gang signs on social media,” a judge in the case noted in a June 2018 ruling.
Escobar and Gomez were teenagers at the time of the slayings — Escobar was tried as an adult.
“They were just high school kids,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Megan Farrell said during opening statements. “They were trying to look tough and get attention. The members of MS-13 saw these pictures on social media and saw these pictures as a deep sign of disrespect, enough to justify death.”
Jeffrey Amador, the defendant’s then-boyfriend and reportedly a former high-ranking member of the gang, testified for the prosecution. He said he took part in the killings, that Escobar chose the spot where it all went down and that she lured the victims to their deaths.
After Escobar was convicted, Peace called the slaughter one of the most vicious and senseless mass murders in the district in memory.
“The defendant showed utter disregard for human life by leading the victims into a killing field, to their slaughter, to enhance her stature with her fellow cold-blooded murderers within the MS-13 gang,” Peace said.
Law&Crime’s Colin Kalmbacher contributed to this report.
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