A high-ranking MS-13 gang member, Alexi Saenz, has pleaded guilty to his involvement in eight brutal murders in New York, including the horrific killings of two high school girls who were beaten with bats and hacked with a machete in 2016.
In a courthouse on Long Island, a high-ranking MS-13 gang member named Alexi Saenz pleaded guilty to his involvement in eight brutal murders, including the gruesome killings of two high school girls. The slain girls, Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens, were honored along with their parents by former President Trump in his 2018 State of the Union speech.
Saenz, also known as "Blasty" and "Big Homie," was the leader of an MS-13 group operating in Brentwood and Central Islip known as Sailors Locos Salvatruchas Westside. His brother, Jairo Saenz, who is accused of being second in command in the local gang, still faces charges.
MS-13 Gang Leader Pleads Guilty to Killing High School Girls
According to prosecutors, the disputes escalated when Cuevas and several friends were involved in an altercation with MS-13 members at Brentwood High School. After that incident, the MS-13 members vowed to seek revenge against Cueva and were granted permission to kill them by Saenz.
Several MS-13 members then chased down and attacked both Cuevas and Mickens, wielding baseball bats and a machete, and striking each of the girls numerous times in their heads and bodies, while Alexi Saenz's car drove around watching for police. After the murders, the group retreated to Saenz's home in Central Islip, where they changed clothes and hid the weapons.
MS-13 Gang Leader Pleads Guilty to Killing High School Girls
In addition to Cuevas and Mickens, Saenz admitted his role in the killing of six other people, including 15-year-old Javier Castillo, who was befriended by members of the gang, driven 30 miles away to Freeport, and then fatally attacked with a machete in an isolated marsh.
Breon Peace, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said that the gang has now been "decimated" in Long Island. "To say that Alexi Saenz's hands are drenched in blood does not begin to describe the multiple killings and extreme mayhem he personally directed and committed in the span of one year in Suffolk County," Peace said.
MS-13 Gang Leader Pleads Guilty to Killing High School Girls
Kayla's father, Freddy Cuevas, expressed disappointment that the death penalty had been taken off the table. "He's an animal. He's inhumane," Cuevas said of Saenz. "Hopefully, justice will be served soon, and we can put this all behind us, as far as the families are concerned."
As well as Cuevas and Mickens, Saenz admitted his role in the killing of six other people, including 15-year-old Javier Castillo, who was befriended by members of the gang, driven 30 miles away to Freeport, and then fatally attacked with a machete in an isolated marsh as he was believed to have been a member of the 18th Street gang, one of MS-13’s principal rivals. His buried body was discovered a year later in 2017.
MS-13 Gang Leader Pleads Guilty to Killing High School Girls
Another victim, Oscar Acosta, 19, who was also thought to be an 18th Street gang member, was discovered dead in a wooded area near some railroad tracks, days after Cuevas and Mickens had died. He had disappeared nearly five months earlier after he left his Brentwood home to play soccer.
Older victims included Esteban Alvarado-Bonilla, 29, who was killed by a gunman inside a Central Islip deli in early 2017; Dewann Stacks, 34, who was ambushed and beaten to death as he walked along a road in Brentwood near a wooded area that was sometimes used as a gang meeting spot; Marcus Bohannon, 27, who was shot in 2016; and Michael Johnson, who was bludgeoned and stabbed to death in Brentwood in 2016. Saenz's crew suspected that all of the victims were part of rival gangs.
MS-13 Gang Leader Pleads Guilty to Killing High School Girls
In the wake of her daughter’s death, Cuevas’ mother became an anti-gang activist after her daughter’s death, but she was tragically killed in 2018 after she was fatally struck by a car during a dispute over a memorial marking the second anniversary of her daughter’s death. The driver, Annmarie Drago, pleaded guilty in 2024 to negligent homicide.
Since 2010, indictments charging MS-13 members with carrying out more than 70 murders in the Eastern District of New York have been made, resulting in the convictions of dozens of MS-13 leaders and members in connection with those murders, prosecutors said.
