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Jose Jonathan Guevara-Castro was extradited from El Salvador on Tuesday, Aug. 9, nearly a month after the country’s top court gave the green light, the US Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District announced.
Guevara-Castro, also known as “Suspechoso,” had been detained in El Salvador since August 2020, weeks after he was indicted by a federal grand jury in Central Islip for the murder of Kerin Pineda.
The former Freeport High School student’s body was found in a wooded area of Nassau County in 2017, not far from the Sunrise Highway in Merrick, according to reports.
Federal prosecutors said Guevara-Castro, a member of the Hollywood Locos Salvatruchas clique of MS-13, teamed up with another clique known as the Sailors Locos Salvatruchas Westside to murder Pineda in May 2016.
Armed with machetes, they allegedly lured Pineda to a secluded, wooded area near the Merrick-Freeport border, where he was surrounded and violently attacked.
Investigators believe Pineda was murdered for being a member of the 18th Street Gang, one of MS-13’s main rivals.
Pineda’s mutilated corpse was then buried in a hole that had been dug the day prior, where it remained until its discovery more than a year later.
“The extradition of Guevara-Castro demonstrates the resolve of this Office and law enforcement to bring to justice all gang members who commit violent crimes in our district no matter where in the world they may run and try to hide,” said US Attorney Breon Peace.
“I hope the return of the defendant to a federal courtroom on Long Island where he will be held accountable for a vicious murder will bring some measure of closure to the family of the young victim.”
Guevara-Castro is charged in a 24-count indictment, along with seven other MS-13 members and associates, with murder, rackateering, and narcotics trafficking.
He was scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday, Aug. 10, in federal court in Central Islip.
If convicted, he faces up to life in prison.
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