MS-13 member sentenced to 55 years in machete quadruple murder
An MS-13 street gang member apologized Wednesday for the “heinous" hacking to death of four teens in a Central Islip park before a federal judge sentenced him to 55 years in prison.
Josue Portillo, who was 15 at the time of the crime, was the first of about a dozen gang members and associates accused in the April 2017 quadruple murder to plead guilty and to be sentenced in the case. He had faced up to life in prison.
Eastern District prosecutor John Durham had asked for a 60-year sentence, saying, even by the standards of MS-13 these were "extraordinarily serious, serious murders." He called the murders “cold blooded, carefully planned."
The four teens were lured into the park, and then savagely attacked with machetes, clubs, tree limbs and an ax, prosecutors said, because Portillo and other gang members believed the victims were members of a rival gang.
Portillo's attorney, Joseph Ryan of Melville, asked that his client be given a reduced sentence so that he has a “chance of being rehabilitated in federal prison … When he committed the crime he did not have an adult brain, he had a juvenile brain …. We're here to ask he be given a second chance."
But U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Bianco said: “A 15-year-old’s brain is different [but] I don’t believe that explains this defendant’s conduct.” He cited “the unbelievably coldblooded nature of the crime … for no reason," adding that the killings are "hard for anyone to fathom.”
The judge, however, said he had considered Portillo's age at the time as well as the fact that he was the first person to confess.
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