Melvin Canales Saldana, Murder, Virginia 2019

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – The last defendant of the six La Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang members who were convicted at two separate federal trials was sentenced today for racketeering conspiracy, narcotics conspiracy, and offenses related to the murders of four men in 2019.

The six defendants were sentenced for their roles in MS-13’s Sitios Locos Salvatrucha clique (STLS), which operated in Northern Virginia and elsewhere for years. From at least 2017 through 2020, MS-13 members and associates regularly traveled to and from Long Island, New York, for the purpose of obtaining cocaine from Marvin Menjivar Gutierrez, STLS’s leader in the United States. From there, MS-13 members would transport the cocaine to the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area to be sold in nightclubs and bars.

These defendants – members of the violent MS-13 gang – sold drugs to fuel the gang’s business, surveilled and tracked rival gang members, and even murdered innocent victims, all to increase the grip that MS-13 had on the community,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri, head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “With today’s sentencing, we are holding these defendants accountable for the havoc they wreaked. The Criminal Division, along with our federal and local law enforcement partners, is committed to combatting violent criminal organizations that victimize our communities.”

In the spring of 2019, Menjivar and Melvin Canales Saldana, STLS’s second-in-command in the United States, ordered members to begin committing murders so that the junior members could rise in rank within MS-13 and amplify STLS’s prestige and control. In June 2019, three MS-13 members, including Cristian Arevalo Arias and Carlos Turcios Villatoro, lured Victim 1 and Victim 2 to a wooded area and murdered them by shooting and stabbing the victims.

The MS-13 members believed Victim 1 belonged to a rival gang, and then murdered Victim 2 to avoid leaving any witnesses to Victim 1’s murder. “MS-13 represents a cycle of death in our society that cannot be tolerated and must be eradicated. MS-13 sells the poisons that destroy communities, families, and lives, and uses the profits to purchase the weapons they use to kill our people in the streets,” said U.S. Attorney Jessica D. Aber for the Eastern District of Virginia.

In August 2019, Canales ordered an MS-13 member to provide Arevalo with a firearm so that Arevalo, Manilester Andrade Rivas, and other MS-13 members could find and kill any rival gang member. Arevalo shot Victim 3 to death in the Glen Arbor Apartments in Woodbridge, Virginia. In September 2019, Jairo Aguilera Sagastizado travelled to Woodbridge from New York and shot Victim 4 multiple times, killing him.

The six MS-13 defendants were sentenced as follows: Marvin Menjivar Gutierrez, 32, of Queens, New York, was sentenced to life in prison; Melvin Canales Saldana, 24, of Springfield, Virginia, was sentenced to life in prison; Cristian Arevalo Arias, 24, of Woodbridge, Virginia, was sentenced to life in prison; Manilester Andrade Rivas, 23, of Springfield, Virginia, was sentenced to life in prison; Carlos Turcios Villatoro, 25, of Alexandria, Virginia, was sentenced to life in prison; and Jairo Aguilera Sagastizado, 22, of New York, was sentenced to life in prison.