A South Florida teenager who was visiting New York with family for spring break was among the four young people found brutally killed in a park in a Long Island neighborhood.
Jefferson Villalobos, of Pompano Beach, was one of the victims found dead in Central Islip Recreation Village Park Wednesday night, his cousin Yensy Fuentes told NBC 4 New York Friday. He had been on vacation with his grandmother, and arrived from Pompano Beach last Friday, to visit family in Brentwood.
Villalobos, who would have turned 19 next month, had half his face missing, according to Fuentes. He was identified in part by a tattoo he had on his arm.
"My uncle, as soon as he saw it, he knew it was him," Fuentes told NBC 4.
The tattoo was of two hands wrapped around a rosary with the inscription "In God's hands."
Villalobos was popular on social media. Many users posted picutes of the teen and wrote messages of condolences. One user posted "You were such a sweet person. One of the nicest guys at school. You were really a good friend who turned bad days into good days."
His cousin Michael Banegas, also 18, was another victim. Banegas lived in Brentwood and was from Honduras, Fuentes said. He was suffocated with a plastic bag and his face was unrecognizable.
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Another friend who was with the group at the park managed to escape, according to Fuentes. He told Villalobos' family he was hanging out with friends, then saw men come out from the trees with machetes.
"The gang members came out and told them to kneel down -- and then he was just able to run for his life," said Fuentes. "He was the only one that made it out."
The young man who escaped called Banegas' family immediately after he fled. The relatives went to the park but didn't know exactly where to look and felt spooked about going alone; that's when they called police.
On Thursday, parents and relatives of missing 16-year-old Justin Llivicura had gone to the park to ask police for more information on the bodies found there. Llivicura went to the park with friends on Tuesday but has not been answering his phone since then, relatives said. The family filed a missing person report with police on Wednesday.
Even as the victims' families were identifying them, authorities have not released their names pending official identification of the bodies. Police have said one of the victims was 16 years old, two were 18, and the fourth was 20.
The FBI, meanwhile, has joined the probe into the grisly discoveries of young men, who appeared to have been killed with a sharp-edged instrument, in a manner consistent with the modus operandi of the violent MS-13 gang, Police Commissioner Timothy Sini said at a news conference Thursday.
"We're going to do everything in our powers to solve these murders. We have all hands on deck, and we're working closely with the FBI," he said.
Authorities are offering a $25,000 cash reward for information in the case.
The MS-13 gang, also called Mara Salvatrucha, is believed to have been founded as a neighborhood street gang in Los Angeles in the mid-1980s by immigrants fleeing a civil war in El Salvador. It grew after some members were deported to El Salvador, helping to turn that country into one of the most violent places in the world. It's now a major international criminal enterprise with tens of thousands of members in several Central American countries and many U.S. states.
