MS-13 member gets more than 27 years for shooting teen as other members were hacking him to death with knives, machetes

By adamg on Wed, 09/12/2018 - 7:40pm

A federal judge today sentenced an MS-13 member to 27 1/2 years in prison for his role in murdering 16-year-old Cristofer Perez de la Cruz on Falcon Street in East Boston in January, 2016.

Rigoberto "Ninja" Mejia, 32, will face deportation to his native El Salvador after his sentence, the US Attorney's office in Boston reports.

MS-13 members who thought Perez de la Cruz was a member of the rival 18th Stret Gang lured him to Falcon Street early on Jan. 10 through Facebook messages that seemed to be from a girl.

As three members of Mejia's Trece Locos Salvatrucha "clicque" carved the teen up with knives and machetes, "Mejia apparently ran up and fired multiple gunshots into the victim from nearly point-blank range," prosecutors wrote in a sentencing request to Judge F. Dennis Saylor. A fifth member was supposed to participate, but overslept.

Mejia pleaded guilty in April. He was one of 61 people arrested in raids aimed at MS-13 in 2016 - 49 of whom have since either pleaded or been found guilty.

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Cristofer Perez de la Cruz

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Comments

I will not stop

By Waquiot on Wed, 09/12/2018 - 8:14pm.

Thanking you for your reporting.

27 years for first degree murder? Pathetic.

By O-FISH-L on Wed, 09/12/2018 - 8:33pm.

27 years for first degree murder? Pathetic. The state should file first degree murder charges (obviously premeditated) and make sure he gets a life sentence in Walpole after 27 years at Club Fed. Is he another dreamer?

Two things

By Waquiot on Wed, 09/12/2018 - 10:44pm.

First, this was a plea deal, which is why he isn't going away for life. If the reward for sparing the state the trouble of a trial was life in prison, there'd be no motivation for pleading out.

Second, in the prosecution's paperwork, they note that the evidence tying him to the crime is kind of weak. If this went to trial, there was the chance that he could have walked.

In short, we (the people) got a good deal with this sentence.

The other 3 guys should get

By thomas on Wed, 09/12/2018 - 9:06pm.

The other 3 guys should get life in prison with no parole, not 35 years

I agree.

By Luke Warm on Wed, 09/12/2018 - 9:24pm.

Life in prison. And I'm a liberal.

The greatest most refined progress these individuals can make in their own souls requires a concrete container. Will it be hard? I am sure it will be hard. They will probably have to remember their own soft spots, and then still realize even then that they aren't getting out. It'll hurt. But guess what? I stubbed my toe today and it hurt like fuck, that's nothing compared to being flayed by machetes, and I lived.

They do deserve humane treatment and relative safety, whatever that can mean in prison. But they belong in a box forever; they can read, get and education and rethink things. Or just get into more trouble it doesn't matter.