MS-13 leader gets life in prison for ordering brutal slay of Queens teenager

The mother of a teenage MS-13 victim told the gangbanger who ordered her son’s grisly murder he should “rot in jail” — and she got her wish when a judge sent the Queens gang leader Melvi “Letal” Amador-Rios, 32, was hit with the mandatory life sentence at a hearing Tuesday. He was found guilty in August of several violent crimes — including ordering the horrific stabbing of 16-year-old Julio “Bad Boy” Vasquez in 2017, who died because “It brings me so much pain, and I can’t accept the fact that I lost my son to such a brutal death,” Vasquez’s mother, Bertha Palaguachi, said in a statement read by Assistant U. S.

Attorney Anna Karamigios. “They didn’t kill an animal. They killed my son and I want justice.

I hope they stay and rot in jail. ” Brooklyn Federal Court handed down his sentence Tuesday. Amador-Rios, 32, ruled over the gang’s Centrales Locos Salvatruchas, or CLS, clique, and ordered Vasquez’s murder on May 16, 2017, as well as the near-fatal shooting of Luis Serrano, also 16, on Oct.

22, 2016. He also participated in several armed robberies. Vasquez was lured to Alley Pond Park and nearly decapitated by two other gang members, Josue “Colocho” Leiva and Luis “Inquieto” Rivas, who with enough force to leave marks on his skull and neck bones.

Vasquez was a low-level “chequeo” with the CLS clique, and he was on the outs after losing one of the gang’s guns. That led others in MS-13 to think he might be cooperating with police, so Amador-Rios gave him a mission to prove his loyalty: Kill his pal, Tiburon, who also fell out of the gang’s favor, and earn a promotion from “chequeo” to “homeboy” as a reward. Vasquez was given and a week to complete the task.

But he couldn’t do it, and when the deadline ran out, so did his time left to live. Serrano, who was shot in the face , sat quietly in his motorized wheelchair as he watched Amados-Rios’ sentencing. In a written statement, Serrano described his sorrow about how he’d never be able experience the basic joys of his life anymore — playing soccer, riding his bike, going to a beach without being carried onto the sand, or jumping on a trampoline with his young relatives.

“When I woke up in the hospital, the doctor told me how I wasn’t going to be able to move. I started to cry,” Karamigios read from his statement. A trio of MS-13 members shot Serrano because Amador-Dios for rival 18th Street Gang members, and they believed the teen was in the gang because of the company he kept.

“After they shot me, I dragged myself across the floor and tried to ask for help,” he said, describing his desperate bid to survive as he lay bleeding near near 179th St. in Jamaica. “I was dragging myself using my chin.

” Karamigios, the prosecutor, described how Amador-Rios used his influence to recruit “vulnerable, young teenagers” to commit brutal violence. “The defendant used his position of power to convince children who idolized him to join the gang,” she said. Amador-Rios was found guilty after a two-week trial where several members of MS-13 turned on him and testified, “It isn’t like I want to do what I am doing right now, but I cannot rot in jail.

He knows that, and I know that I love him a lot, but there’s nothing that I can do,” his brother, Santos Amador-Rios, told the jury. Amador-Rios made no statement before the judge handed down the sentence. “The defendant will deservedly serve a life sentence for the murder, attempted murder and armed robberies he committed on behalf of MS-13,” U.

S. Attorney Breon Peace said Tuesday. “Today’s sentence reflects justice for the heinous and senseless nature of the defendant’s crimes and the terror he inflicted on his victims, their families and the community.

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