Photo Courtesy of U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York
Marcelo Esquivel’s arm tattooed with “MS.”
By Forum Staff
The former leader of a borough clique of MS-13 has been charged in the July 2012 murder of a rival gang member in Jamaica, federal prosecutors announced Friday.
An indictment was unsealed Friday in Brooklyn federal court charging Marcelo Esquivel, 31, with murder in-aid-of racketeering and causing death through the use of a firearm in connection with the fatal shooting of Daniel Licona-Gonzalez. According to authorities, at the time of the murder, Esquivel was the leader of the Centrales Locos Salvatruchas set of MS-13.
According to court documents, on July 2, 2012, Esquivel directed two MS-13 members to murder a member of the rival Latin Kings gang and provided them with a gun. Coconspirator-1 was a new member of the gang and hoped to earn respect within the gang by carrying out an act of violence. Coconspirator-1 and Coconspirator-2 then set out on a bicycle to find a Latin King to murder. Coconspirator-2 rode the bicycle and Coconspirator-1 stood on the bicycle’s back pegs. They went to a location that they understood was Latin Kings’ territory to find their target. In the vicinity of Lowe Court and 149th Street in Jamaica, they saw a group of men that they believed were Latin Kings. One of the Coconspirators yelled, “La Mara!”—a reference to MS-13—and shot Licona-Gonzalez in the head. He died the following day.
“A man standing in the street was shot in the head, and later died because two members of MS-13 sought out a twisted type of gravitas in their violent gang,” said FBI NY Assistant Director-in-Charge Bill Sweeney, Jr.
