A Long Island, New York, man who was a member of the transnational criminal organization La Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13, has been sentenced to more than 26 years in prison for murdering a teen and an attempted killing.
Nelson Argueta-Quintanilla, also known as “Mendigo,” was sentenced Nov. 22, in federal court to 327 months in prison for the murder of Oscar Acosta and an attempt to shoot to kill rival gang members, a news release said. Argueta-Quintanilla is a member of the Sailors Locos Salvatruchas Westside clique.
“Demonstrating the defendant’s complete disregard for human life, today’s sentence is a fitting punishment for a brutal murder followed by another reckless shooting,” U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Breon Peace said in the release. “This office and our law enforcement partners remain committed to holding violent actors, including gang members, accountable for the fear, destruction and death they bring to our communities.”
Argueta-Quintanilla pleaded guilty in September 2021 to racketeering, the release reported He also admitted involvement in murdering Acosta, attempted shooting to kill and narcotics trafficking.
Acosta was targeted by Argueta-Quintanilla and other MS-13 members because he had once been affiliated with MS-13 but began associations with the rival 18th Street gang. MS-13 members and Acosta met April 29, 2016, in a wooded area close to a Brentwood, N.Y., elementary school “where they learned a fellow MS-13 member was meeting Acosta to smoke marijuana,” the release said.
Argueta-Quintanilla and other gang members knocked Acosta unconscious with a large tree branch, the release reported. Members of the Sailors clique arrived, after which Acosta was relocated to “a secluded wooded area in Brentwood behind several warehouses and adjacent to the grounds of an abandoned psychiatric hospital.” Acosta, his hands and feet tied together, was carried alive from the trunk of a car into the woods.
“Once in the woods, the defendant and three other MS-13 members took turns striking Acosta with a machete,” the release said. “The MS-13 members then put Acosta in a shallow grave, covered him with dirt and fled the area. On September 16, 2016, while searching for the victim of a different MS-13 murder, law enforcement found Acosta’s body, which was in a shallow grave, and his hands and feet were still bound.”
In the case of the attempted killing, Argueta-Quintanilla and other Sailors clique members drove around Brentwood Aug. 10, 2016, looking for rival gang members to kill, according to the release. The group “opened fire” at several men standing outside a house on Lukens Avenue. No one was injured.
Argueta-Quintanilla was arrested May 2, 2018, on a federal warrant in connection with the case, the release reported.
“At the time, he was in immigration custody and had been since June 27, 2017,” the release said.
