Jose Lopez Torres, Murder, Virginia 2013

Three senseless killings and one attempted murder in Northern Virginia have been laid to rest, as six members of the notorious MS-13 gang were convicted in federal court.

The brutal murders took place between 2013 and 2014 in the Northern Virginia area, with the victims being fellow gang members who were deemed a threat or had broken gang rules.

According to court records, on October 1, 2013, Jose Lopez Torres, Jaime Rosales Villegas, and others drove to Gar-Field High School in Woodbridge, where they planned to murder a fellow gang member. However, one of the gang members, who was an informant, had alerted police to the murder plot and wore a body wire to a meeting where the gang members planned the murder.

On October 7, 2013, Torres, Omar DeJesus Castillo, Juan Carlos Marquez Ayala, Araely Santiago Villanueva, Jose Del Cid, and three others brutally killed fellow gang member Nelson Omar Quintanilla Trujillo in Holmes Run Park, Falls Church. The gang members stabbed him with knives and slashed him with a machete, and then buried him in a shallow grave.

On March 29, 2014, Castillo, Benitez, Christian Lemus Cerna, Manuel Ernesto Paiz Guevara, Villanueva, Del Cid, and one other murdered Gerson Adoni Martinez Aguilar, a gang recruit, because he had broken gang rules. They also lured him to Holmes Run Park, where they killed him, then cut off his head and buried him in a shallow grave.

On June 19, 2014, Jesus Alejandro Chavez, Del Cid, and Genaro Sen Garcia murdered Julio Urrutia, who was shot in the head by Chavez. Several gang members, including Chavez, who had been released from prison eight days earlier, were out looking for rival gang members when they approached a group of young men and flashed their gang signs.

U.S. Attorney Dana J. Boente praised the trial team and investigative partners for their work on the case, saying, ‘These violent gang members brutally murdered three men and attempted to murder a fourth.’ He added that ‘no gang can protect them from facing justice for their crimes.’

The defendants are expected to face life in prison for their crimes. The case was a highly complicated one, with 13 defendants and over two dozen defense attorneys involved.

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