Federal prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against a 24-year-old gang leader accused of perpetrating seven murders along with his brother described as “a bloodthirsty criminal” by President Trump.
Jairo Saenz will be executed if convicted of the murders of Michael Johnson, Oscar Acosta, Javier Castillo, Dewann Stacks, Esteban Alvarado-Bonilla, and the bludgeoning deaths of high school friends Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens in 2016.
Mickens was butchered to death by Saenz and his fellow gangsters a day before her 16th birthday along with her best friend Cuevas, 16.
The girls were chased and bludgeoned with baseball bats and machetes over a dispute with the murderers.
Since his arrest in 2017, Saenz was involved in many offenses against other inmates and correctional officers at the jail. He even threatened witnesses willing to testify against him in court.
The MS-13 gang left dozens of shallow graves and mutilated victims across Long Island. In 2018, President Donald Trump met with the victims’ families.
“Many of these gang members took advantage of glaring loopholes in our laws to enter the country as illegal unaccompanied alien minors and wound up in Kayla and Nisa’s high school,” he said at the State of the Union Address.
“I am calling on congress to finally close the deadly loop-holes that have allowed MS-13 and other criminal gangs to break into our country.”
