Alexandria, Virginia — Even in the violent world of the MS-13 street gang, the killings in northern Virginia in the summer of 2019 stood out. That year, “the Washington, DC metropolitan area became an MS-13 hunting ground,” in the words of prosecutors.
Law enforcement had become accustomed to MS-13 murders involving rival gang members, or murders in which MS-13 members themselves became victims when suspicions arose that they were working with police. What was new, prosecutors say, was that the victims were chosen at random, without any connection to MS-13 or any other gang.
On Tuesday, gang leader Melvin Canales Saldana, whose orders prompted the killings, was sentenced to life in prison, as was another gang member convicted of carrying out one of these murders. A third member was sentenced to 14 years in prison after being convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, but was acquitted of committing the murder himself.
Prosecutors say Canales was the second member in the Sitios cabal, or subunit, of MS-13, which had a strong presence in northern Virginia. In the spring of 2019, Canales ordered mid-level members to carry out their duties and kill rival gang members more aggressively, prosecutors said; Until then, members of the cabal had largely contented themselves with transporting cocaine between New York and Virginia.
MS-13 members responded by patrolling Virginia and Maryland, looking for rival gang members. But prosecutors say they were empty. When that happened, they instead targeted random civilians so they could increase their status within the gang.
“On its face, the murders committed in the wake of defendant’s orders appear to be the subject of an urban legend,” prosecutors John Blanchard and Matthew Hoff wrote in the lawsuits. “Gang members forming hunting parties and killing anyone unlucky enough to cross their path was an alien concept.”
In August 2019, gang members targeted Eric Tate as he traveled to an apartment complex to meet a woman. He bled to death in the street. The following month, Antonio Smith was coming home from a grocery store when he was shot six times and killed. Court papers show Smith asked his killers why they shot him.
In a separate trial, three other MS-13 members, including American gang leader Marvin Menjivar Gutiérrez, were convicted for their roles in the double murder of Milton Bertram Lopez and Jairo Geremeas Mayorga. Their bodies were found in June 2019 in a wooded area of Prince William County in Virginia. The suspects from that trial have not yet been convicted.
Canales’ attorney, Lana Manitta, said she will appeal her client’s conviction. She said that targeting innocent civilians was against her client’s wishes, and that his subordinates tried to portray the shooting victims as legitimate gang rivals for him so that they would earn their promotion within the gang.
“Mr. Canales repeatedly warned members of the cabal to ‘do things right,’” Manitta said in the lawsuits.
Prosecutors say Canales joined the gang at age 14 or 15 while living in El Salvador and came to the U.S. illegally in 2016 to avoid arrest warrants in that country.
MS-13 started as a neighborhood street gang in Los Angeles but grew into a transnational gang based in El Salvador. Federal authorities say the organization has members in Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico, and thousands of members in the United States with numerous cliques.
