US

MS-13 Gang Leader Gets Life In Prison After Grisly Crime Spree

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A man regarded as one of most prominent MS-13 leaders in the country was sentenced to lifetime imprisonment Tuesday for involvement in murder and other violent crimes, the Eastern District of Virginia U.S. Attorney’s Office announced.

Andy Tovar, 33, of White Post, Virginia, who led MS-13’s Guanacos Lil Cycos Salvatruchas (GLCS) clique, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder, attempted murder assault with a dangerous weapon and assault with a dangerous weapon in aid of racketeering activity, the office’s press release said. He also entered guilty pleas for using and discharging a firearm during a violent crime and to conspiracy to distribute cocaine and marijuana.

In 2017, Tovar ordered the murder of a suspected rival gang member in Charlottesville, Virginia, wherein fellow MS-13 members stabbed the man more than 140 times and burned his car. He provided a gun used to attack another man in Bristow, Virginia in 2019 for purportedly disrespecting MS-13, reported the attempted murder to El Salvadorian MS-13 leadership and mocked the failure to kill.

Tovar gave MS-13 member and co-defendant Kevin Perez Sandoval permission to kill a third man at a laundromat in 2019 and provided cocaine that GLCS member and co-defendant Roberto Cruz Moreno sold, according to the office.

El Salvador extradited a different MS-13 member to the U.S. over the summer after he allegedly conspired to commit murder and committed racketeering conspiracy in Long Island, New York. The Republican-sponsored Every Town a Border Town Act introduced to the House in June would designate MS-13 a Foreign Terrorist Organization, but the bill has so far failed to pass.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.