MS-13 member pleads not guilty to vicious stabbing of teen in Lynn

A Salvadorean national and member of a local MS-13 gang accused of participating in the murder of a teenager in Lynn pleaded not guilty Monday to showing no mercy to the 17-year-old victim.

Eliseo Vaquerano Canas, also known as “Peligroso,” or dangerous, appeared in U.S. District Court for his arraignment, under an indictment accusing him and five other men of murdering Herson “Smiley” Rivas in 2018 near the Henry Avenue Playground in Lynn.

Canas is an alleged member of the Sykos Locos Salvatrucha, one of nine area cliques of the gang, an FBI affidavit states.

In July 2018, Canas and five other gang members picked up Rivas, a younger member of the Sykos Locos, in a car and drove him to Henry Avenue Playground, where they murdered him after telling him they suspected he was cooperating with law enforcement, according to the affidavit.

A jailhouse recording of co-conspirator Henri Salvador Gutierrez, also known as “Perverso,” or perverse, captured Gutierrez talking to a cooperating witness about Rivas’ murder, describing in detail how the group stabbed Rivas so hard their knives were warped and chipped, records state.

“Peligroso, dude, he was dicing him as if he were a cow, that (expletive)!” Gutierrez allegedly said on the recording. “The knife Peligroso had, dude, looked like a saw now, dude.”

Gutierrez also described how Rivas was good friends with Canas and screamed “Peli” repeatedly while he was being stabbed by Canas, the affidavit states.

Rivas was found dead a few days later lying in a wooded area of the park.

A later raid at a home in Chelsea uncovered two knives, including one with a chipped blade, and a blue MS-13 jersey with “Peligroso” on the back.

Canas is in the country illegally, having entered the U.S. on a tourist visa in 2016 that expired in June 2017.

Four of the co-conspirators pleaded not guilty to the racketeering conspiracy charge earlier this month.

Gutierrez, who entered the U.S. illegally in 2014, was released by an immigration judge from custody in June 2018, after making excuses for his gang tattoos, gang-colored apparel and run-ins with the law, the affidavit states.

“It appears that (Gutierrez) misled the immigration court when he obtained his release and an adjustment to his immigration status,” the affidavit states, “A little more than a month before he and five other MS-13 members murdered Rivas.”

The defendants are scheduled to return to court for an interim status conference Dec. 12 in U.S. District Court.

Djavier Duggins, the alleged leader of the Sykos Locos who waived his arraignment, also has a motion pending to review his detention status, as his attorney wrote in a motion the weight of the government’s evidence against Duggins falls on Gutierrez, a “confessed killer.”

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/330GszW