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MS-13 Member Sentenced For Brutal Machete Killing Of 15-Year-Old On Long Island

A member of the violent international crime gang known as MS-13 will spend more than two decades in prison for brutally murdering a 15-year-old boy on Long Island and then hiding his body.

The body of 15-year-old Javier Castillo (pictured here) was found in October 2017 near Cow Meadow Park in Freeport, a year after he was brutally murdered by members of the MS-13 gang.

The body of 15-year-old Javier Castillo (pictured here) was found in October 2017 near Cow Meadow Park in Freeport, a year after he was brutally murdered by members of the MS-13 gang.

Photo Credit: New York State Police/Google Maps street view

Eduardo Portillo, age 25, was sentenced in federal court in Central Islip Tuesday, July 12, to 25 years behind bars after admitting to his involvement in the killing of Javier Castillo.

Federal prosecutors said Portillo and other members of the Sailors Locos Salvatruchas Westside (Sailors) clique of MS-13 convinced the teen to accompany them to Cow Meadow Park in Freeport in October 2016, claiming they wanted to smoke marijuana.

Once there, they lured him to an isolated marsh near the park and took turns hacking him to death with a machete, prosecutors said. They then dug a hole and buried his body.

The whereabouts of Castillo’s body remained a mystery for a year before it was finally unearthed in October 2017.

The boy’s killers targeted him because of his alleged ties to the rival 18th Street gang on Long Island, prosecutors said.

Portillo, who was illegally in the United States, was deported to El Salvador before he was indicted in May 2018.

He was eventually arrested there in 2019 and extradited back to the US in 2020 after authorities issued an alert to law enforcement agencies worldwide.

In addition to his role in the murder, Portillo also pleaded guilty to racketeering and selling cocaine and marijuana on behalf of MS-13.

“With today’s sentence, Portillo learned there are very serious consequences for participating in the planning and execution of a murder so that he could gain membership in the MS-13 gang, a vicious criminal enterprise whose members have no regard for human life or the rule of law,” said US Attorney Breon Peace.

“That the victim in this case was a 15-year-old boy is all the more tragic, and it is my hope that dogged work of law enforcement in tracking down the defendant in El Salvador, his extradition to the Eastern District of New York, and the decades the defendant will spend in prison, brings some measure of closure to the family of the young victim.”

According to the Department of Justice, the MS-13 gang is the most violent criminal organization on Long Island.

Since 2003, hundreds of its members have been convicted on federal felony charges brought by the US Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of New York, a majority of them on racketeering charges relating to murder and assaults.

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