Newark MS-13 Murders
New York Times : Serge F. Kovaleski : August 15th 2007

Link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/15/nyregion/15newark.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Summary:
On August 4th, a group of MS-13 like thugs led by Jose Lachira Carranza, an illegal immigrant from Peru, murdered 3 promising young people: Dashon Harvey, Iofemi Hightower, and Terrance Aeriel, in a school yard in the “sanctuary city”, of Newark, New Jersey. Natasha Aeriel was also shot but survived.

Analysis:
I’m hesitant to post about this particular story because I’m not sure it identifies any trend or major development. It’s not clear at this point, if the perpetrators were in fact members of MS-13, or even what it means to be a “member” of MS-13. I would say to be a member, you have to be a member of one of the known cliques. I haven’t seen reporting on these perpetrators associating them with a known clique. So, I assume they were just criminals, emulating MS-13. Perhaps, they were using the MS-13 brand to enhance their own fearful image.

Besides the obvious cause and effect aspect, that the murders took place in a “sanctuary city” and were perpetrated by illegal aliens, another interesting aspect of this case, and probably another reason it has attracted so much attention is that the murder victims were Black, and the perpetrators were Hispanic. This is unusual for MS-13 violence. Typically, MS-13 preys upon it’s own. This is perhaps another indicator that these perpetrators weren’t bona fide MS-13 members.