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Jonathan Hernandez, age 26, of Brentwood, was sentenced to over 43 years in prison in Central Islip federal court on Wednesday, Jan. 31.
It followed his guilty plea to racketeering charges in May 2022 stemming from his participation in the January 2016 murder of Michael Johnson and the killing of Oscar Acosta three months later.
According to prosecutors, Hernandez is a member of the Sailors clique of MS-13 and wanted to increase his status in the gang.
On Jan. 28, 2016, he and several others were instructed by gang leaders to bring a machete and a baseball bat to a wooded area in Brentwood. The plan was to kill the 29-year-old Johnson, a suspected member of the rival Bloods gang.
After spotting Johnson at the Jocorena Deli in Brentwood, the local Sailors clique leader lured him to the secluded meeting spot under the guise of smoking marijuana.
Numerous MS-13 members, including Hernandez, ambushed him from behind, attacking him with a baseball bat, stabbing him with a knife, and taking turns hacking him with a machete, prosecutors said.
A passerby found Johnson’s body days later. An autopsy showed he had died from sharp and blunt force injuries.
Hernandez also admitted taking part in the ambush killing of 19-year-old Oscar Acosta, who the Sailors clique had “green-lit” for murder after suspecting that he was associating with the rival 18th Street gang.
On April 29, 2016, several gang members lured Acosta to a wooded area near a Brentwood elementary school under the guise of smoking marijuana.
They first beat the man with tree limbs, knocking him unconscious, before binding his hands and feet, covering his mouth, and loading him into the trunk of a car.
The group then drove him to a more secluded area near the abandoned Pilgrim State Psychiatric Hospital, where they carried him into the woods and took turns hacking him to death with a machete, prosecutors said.
Police discovered Acosta’s body nearly five months later, on Sept. 16, while searching for another MS-13 victim. An autopsy showed he had suffered sharp and blunt force injuries to his head and torso.
As part of his federal guilty plea, Hernandez also confessed to opening fire on a group of suspected rival gang members in Brentwood in August 2016. Nobody was hit, but a stray bullet entered a neighboring home and struck the headboard of a bed where someone was sleeping.
He also copped to selling “street-levels” of cocaine and marijuana in Brentwood and surrounding areas between April 2016 and October 2017 in order to finance the Sailors’ illegal operations.
“Today’s sentence is the result of choices the defendant made to commit serious crimes on behalf of the Sailors clique of the MS-13, including the brutal premeditated murders of two young men, assaults with dangerous weapons, attempted murders, and the distribution of drugs,” said US Attorney Breon Peace.
“The substantial period of incarceration imposed today will protect the public from more crimes committed by the defendant and it is my hope, deter young men from joining this depraved gang.”
Hernandez was previously sentenced to over four years in federal prison in March 2018 after he and other MS-13 members attacked a group of suspected rivals with baseball bats and pipes near Brentwood East Elementary School in October 2015.
MS-13 is the most violent criminal organization on Long Island, according to the US Attorney’s Office.
Since 2003, hundreds of members have been convicted in the Eastern District of New York, the majority for racketeering charges for their roles in murders, attempted murders, and assaults.
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