Victim Andy Peralta (Facebook)
March 26, 2021 By Allie Griffin
A MS-13 gang associate from Elmhurst has been indicted for a gruesome murder that took place inside a Flushing park three years ago, federal authorities announced Friday.
Oscar Flores-Mejia, 21, was indicted on the charge of murder in-aid-of racketeering at Brooklyn federal court Thursday for the 2018 killing of 17-year-old Andy Peralta.
Peralta was killed in Kissena Park on April 23, 2018, after being ambushed by Flores-Mejia and two other alleged MS-13 gang members. He was repeatedly slashed, stabbed, beaten and strangled until he died, according to court records.
Flores-Mejia, also known as “Chamuco” — Mexican slang meaning “the devil”, then posed for a photo, which showed him on top of Peralta’s battered body and giving the MS-13 hand sign.
“After allegedly helping to torture and murder the teenage victim, the defendant leaned over his lifeless body and displayed the MS-13 hand sign, openly revealing his presence at the scene and linking MS-13 to this horrific crime,” Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Mark Lesko said.
Peralta had a tattoo of a crown on his chest, which Flores-Mejia mistakenly believed to be a symbol of a rival gang, according to court filings.
“This Office and its federal, state and local law enforcement partners will not rest until the senseless brutality and violence of MS-13 has been eliminated,” Lesko said.
Flores-Mejia was arrested last month and ordered detained pending a trial. He’ll be arraigned at a later date.
His indictment is the latest in a series of federal prosecutions by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York targeting members of the MS-13, a trans-national gang with leadership in El Salvador and Honduras.
Since 2010, the office has convicted dozens of MS-13 leaders and members in connection with more than 45 murders in the district.
“Transnational criminal street gangs like MS-13 serve only to terrorize our communities and prey upon our most vulnerable youth who are often left with little choice–join the gang or face the consequence,” said Peter Fitzhugh, Special Agent-in-Charge of New York’s Homeland Security Investigations. “This unfair choice ends one of two ways, jail or death.”
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