A leader of an MS-13 gang clique in New York pleaded guilty on Wednesday to racketeering and firearms charges in a case involving eight murders, including the 2016 killings of two high school girls who were hacked and beaten to death as they strolled through their leafy, suburban neighborhood on Long Island.
Alexi Saenz entered the plea in federal court in Central Islip. Prosecutors previously withdrew an attempt to seek the death penalty in his case.
Among the deaths he was accused of ordering are the killings of Kayla Cuevas, 16, and Nisa Mickens, 15, lifelong friends and classmates at Brentwood high school.
Their deaths focused the nation’s attention on MS-13 gang violence during the administration of Donald Trump. The Republican president called for the death penalty for Saenz and others arrested in the killings.
The girls’ deaths led to questions about whether police had been aggressive enough in confronting what was then a serious threat of gangs developing inside area high schools.
For months in 2016, Hispanic children and young men had been disappearing in Brentwood, a working-class community 40 miles east of New York City. After Cuevas and Mickens were killed, police discovered the bodies of three other young people in Brentwood, ages 15, 18 and 19, who had vanished months earlier.
Police and federal agents arrested dozens of suspected members of MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, a transnational criminal organization believed to have been founded as a neighborhood street gang in Los Angeles in the mid-1980s by people fleeing civil war in El Salvador.
Cuevas’s mother, Evelyn Rodriguez, became an anti-gang activist after her daughter’s death but was herself killed in 2018. Rodriguez was fatally struck by a car during a dispute over a memorial marking the second anniversary of her daughter’s death. The driver, Annmarie Drago, pleaded guilty in 2024 to negligent homicide.
Saenz’s lawyers did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Wednesday.
Prosecutors said Saenz, also known as “Blasty” and “Big Homie”, was the leader of an MS-13 clique operating in Brentwood and Central Islip known as Sailors Locos Salvatruchas Westside. Charges are still pending against his brother, Jairo Saenz, who prosecutors say was second-in-command in the local gang.
Kayla’s father, Freddy Cuevas, said outside court that he was disappointed that the death penalty had been taken off the table.
“He’s an animal. He’s inhumane,” Freddy Cuevas said of Saenz. “Hopefully justice will be served soon and we can put this all behind us as far as the families are concerned.”
Nisa’s mother, Elizabeth Alvarado, expressed relief that she and other families of the victims would not have to go through the trauma of a trial.
“All I want is my daughter to be at peace,” she said through tears as she wore a black shirt with her daughter’s name on the back. “The more time we have out, she is never going to be at peace. At the end of the day, she is going to be happy because it will all be over.”
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