Two of the alleged Trinitarios gang members named in a sweeping federal indictment earlier this 12 months have been extradited again to the U.S. to face costs associated to 2 murders in Massachusetts.
Elvis Trujillo, 27, and Yeferson Vallecillo Cambar, 23, had been arrested final December in Honduras forward of the indictment unsealed in February that included greater than two dozen alleged members of the Trinitarios road gang working in Massachusetts. They had been returned to the U.S. to face racketeering conspiracy, or RICO, costs on Wednesday and appeared in federal court docket in Boston Thursday afternoon.
Trujillo was within the U.S. illegally and federal prosecutors say they consider he consented to removing to Honduras after being convicted of an earlier capturing to keep away from costs for his function in a homicide he’ll now be tried for. Cambar, prosecutors say, probably fled to Honduras for comparable causes.
The February indictment said that investigation into the racketeering actions of the Trinitarios had been set off by two double-murder drive-by shootings in Lynn that ended the lives of Jandriel Hernandez and Abraham Diaz on Sept. 2, 2023, and Kyle Mel and Isaiah Acevedo on Dec. 27, 2023. Trujillo and Cambar, nonetheless, are implicated as collaborating in two different murders.
Federal prosecutors accuse Trujillo of being a gunman within the killing of Juan Espinal in March 2017 and Mindy Tran in November 2017. Prosecutors say that Trujillo and one other alleged gang member ambushed Espinal and chased him down, executing him by gunfire within the streets. Prosecutors say that Trujillo and one other tried to rob Tran — a mom of two younger daughters — throughout a marijuana sale and that Trujillo fired the shot that killed her.
The Trinitarios group started within the Nineteen Nineties by Dominicans within the New York Metropolis jail at Rikers Island, in keeping with a regulation enforcement affidavit filed within the bigger case. It’s named after three revolutionaries from the Dominican Struggle of Independence towards Haiti, which regulation enforcement says “provides an underlying patriotic veneer to the gang’s activities.”
U.S. Lawyer for Massachusetts Leah Foley mentioned that gang members “cast a wide net and recruited very vigorously,” concentrating on Dominican teenagers from space excessive faculties. These younger recruits would then undergo a probationary interval till they full a “mission,” in keeping with regulation enforcement, “which is generally a substantial act of violence such as a shooting” — for which the recruit is awarded ceremonial beads and membership, in keeping with court docket paperwork.
