On Monday, the White House backed up President Donald Trump’s comments last week referring to members of the notoriously violent gang MS-13 as “animals,” after the media twisted the remarks.
“Too many innocent Americans have fallen victim to the unthinkable violence of MS-13’s animals,” read an official White House statement. “MS-13 is a transnational gang that has brought violence, fear, and suffering to American communities.”
The gang “commits shocking acts of violence to instill fear, including machete attacks, executions, gang rape, human trafficking, and more,” the statement added. “In their motto, the animals of MS-13 make clear their goal is to ‘kill, rape, control.’ The gang has more than 10,000 members in the United States spreading violence and suffering.”
The White House listed many different violent attacks. PJ Media has compiled a list of eleven vile incidents below.
1. September 2015: Teen killed with machete.
In September 2015, 22-year-old Jose Granados-Guevara hacked 14-year-old Jose Meraz apart with a machete in West Houston, Texas. In June 2016, prosecutors revealed that multiple MS-13 gang members, including Granados-Guevara, planned the murder, the Houston Chronicle reported.
2. June 2016: Teen stabbed 153 times.
In May 2017, 20-year-old Vanessa E. Alvarado was sentenced to 40 years in prison for her role in the murder of 18-year-old Christian Villagran Morales, the New York Daily News reported.
Alvarado lured Morales into Maryland woods with the promise of sex, leading him to a group of MS-13 gang members, who then mobbed Morales, stabbing him more than one hundred times.
3. January 2017: Snow torture, tattoo removal, and stabbing.
In January of this year, 18-year-old Venus Romero Iraheta (who was 17 at the time of the murder) pled guilty to the murder of 15-year-old Damaris Alexandra Reyes Rivas in Fairfax County, Va., Fox 26 Houston reported.
Iraheta, angry over rumors that Rivas had slept with her boyfriend, Christian Sosa Rivas, joined with other MS-13 gang members to capture, torture, and kill Rivas. She forced Rivas to walk through snow and cold without shoes or a shirt, forced a confession out of Rivas, and then proceeded to slice off a tattoo Sosa Rivas had given the victim on her hand.
After telling the victim that “the next time they met would be in hell,” Iraheta proceeded to stab her repeatedly in the stomach, chest, and neck. In total, MS-13 gang members stabbed the victim 19 times, then dragged her under I-495. The teens captured the murder on video to send to MS-13 leadership in El Salvador for promotion into the gang’s ranks.
4. February 2016: “Satanic murder” in Texas.
Illegal immigrant MS-13 gang members 22-year-old Miguel Alvarez-Florez and 18-year-old Diego Hernandez-Rivera kidnapped one teenage girl, who recalled them murdering another. Alvarez-Florez led a local group of gang members, going by the nickname “Diabolico.”
The kidnapping victim reportedly told detectives that six gang members forced her to take drugs and alcohol to keep her down, and that Alvarez-Florez tattooed the image of a grim reaper from her knee down to her foot, the Houston Chronicle reported.
The victim also remembered “Genesis,” telling detectives that she made an outburst against the gang members’ satanic rituals and shrine. This outburst led Alvarez-Florez to declare that the “Beast” required a sacrifice. The next morning, Genesis had disappeared. Police found her body, which had been shot once in the head and once in the chest.
5. Early 2017: Man decapitated, stabbed, heart removed.
In November 2017, an MS-13 gang member was arrested for murdering an unidentified man whose body was found decapitated, stabbed over 100 times, and with his heart removed in Montgomery County, Md., WJLA reported.
The 19-year-old gang member Miguel Angel Lopez-Abrego was arrested for killing the man between December 2016 and March 2017.
6. March 2017: Hands cut off, throat cut, tongue pulled…
Last April, prosecutors charged 19-year-old Victor Arnoldo Rodas, 21-year-old Jose Coreas-Ventura, and 24-year-old Lisandro Posada Vasquez with second-degree murder for their alleged roles in the death of 17-year-old Raymond Wood of Lynchburg, Va., The Roanoke Times reported.
“His hands were cut off, his throat was cut, his tongue was pulled into his throat, he was stabbed 16 times, ran over three times,” Dale Wood, the victim’s uncle, told WLNI.
7. March 2017: Teen shot dead in the street.
Two MS-13 gang members — 23-year-old Pedro Rivera and 18-year-old Hector Lazo — were arrested in July 2017 for shooting 37-year-old Nelson Rodriguez in the back of the head on the street in Hempstead, N.Y., the Long Island Press reported.
8. April 2017: Four teens killed, at least one asked to get out of MS-13.
Four teen boys between the ages of 16 and 20 were found dead, stabbed all over their bodies, last April in Long Island, N.Y., Britain’s Daily Mail reported. Police said the four were repeatedly stabbed all over their bodies in a gang-style killing.
A friend of one of the victims told the New York Post that Alex Ruiz was “a member of MS-13. He called me, the friend in MS-13, he called me last night at 6:30 and told me my brother is here.” He later found computer messages reading, “I don’t want to do these things anymore. I want out.”
9. June 2017: Young woman beaten to death.
In October, five MS-13 gang members were charged in the June death of 21-year-old Jenni B. Rivera Lopez, the Baltimore Sun reported. The five allegedly drove Lopez to a remote spot outside Annapolis, M.D., beat her to death, and buried her there.
10. August 2017: Teen ‘MS-13 prostitute’ beaten with baseball bat.
Last August, 24-year-old Miguel Angel Ayala-Rivera, a top local MS-13 leader who goes by the name “Noctorno” and pimps out a number of underage girls from many states, ordered a hefty beating. Ayala-Rivera said the 15-year-old victim was “not doing a good job as an MS-13 prostitute.”
Ayala-Rivera, along with 20-year-old Ivan Alexis Pena-Rodriguez, 21-year-old Yervin Josue Romero-Rivera, and two other men, used a solid bat, taking 28 turns whacking the girl’s flailing body. Her injuries included an “indented” buttocks, discolored arms and legs, and visible bleeding from the neck down,” WJLA reported.
The three men were formally charged with first-degree assault, along with other assorted criminal counts.
11. October 2017: Teen boy’s murder leads to 17 arrested.
In January 2018, a grand jury indicted 17 alleged members and associates of MS-13, following multiple murders and drug trafficking, following through on a seven-month investigation across multiple states, NBC New York reported.
While the investigation started with narcotics trafficking, it grew to encompass the murder of 15-year-old Long Iland boy Angel Soler, whose body was found in October. A 13-year-old boy had previously been killed using a machete.
When President Donald Trump referred to MS-13 gang members as “animals,” he was referring to this kind of violence. PETA would likely complain that branding MS-13 gang members as “animals” gives furry critters a bad name. While animals often kill one another, they do not wantonly kill in the way these villains do.
Trump was clearly right to attack MS-13 members as utterly vile. Ironically, his “animals” comment did not go far enough.
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