A young killer who wanted so badly to climb the ranks of MS-13 that he lured a teen into a deadly Queens ambush got 45 years behind bars Tuesday.
Oscar Flores-Mejia, or “Chamuco,” was the “driving force” behind the bloody, 30-minute assault in Kissena Park, recruiting his co-defendants into a plan to beat, choke and stab 17-year-old victim Andy Peralta to death on April 13, 2018, federal prosecutors said.
“He gave the order to attack Peralta at the start of the murder. He is the one who stomped on Peralta’s face and head while Amaya-Ramirez choked Peralta to death. And he is the one who stuffed dirt into Peralta’s mouth to stifle his screams for his parents,” prosecutors said in a court filing last year. “Even after Peralta was dead, the defendant stabbed and mutilated his corpse and posed over his body for a trophy photograph.”
Flores-Mejia’s sentence was handed down by Brooklyn Federal Court Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall, who last year gave accomplice Juan Amaya-Rivera 45 years in prison.
Peralta hung out with young members of the 18th Street Gang, a bitter rival of MS-13, as a teen, but he distanced himself from them when he found a girlfriend, prosecutors said. Buoyed by young love, his grades improved, his attitude brightened, and he got along better with his parents, prosecutors said.
Before all that, though, Peralta and his pals recorded a Facebook Live video in June 2017 where he flashed an 18th Street Gang sign and sang with his buddies.
That video sealed Peralta’s fate. Flores-Mejia somehow came across it, possibly through social media connections, and shared it with the aspiring MS-13 members who ultimately killed him.
Now 26, Flores-Mejia was 18 years old and living in Elmhurst when he and his fellow gang members killed Peralta.
Obtained by Daily News
Andy Peralta.
He and his co-conspirator Amaya-Rivera were young associates of MS-13 when they both lived in El Salvador, and the gang used Amaya-Rivera’s girlfriend, Leyla Carranza, as bait for their trap.
She chatted Peralta up on social media, convincing him to come to Kissena Park, but when he arrived, she took his phone and led him to Amaya-Ramirez, Flores-Mejia and a third man, Juan Lazo-Villa, prosecutors said.
Carranza waited in her boyfriend’s car while the trio set upon Peralta. She’s serving a 22-year sentence.
At Flores-Mejia’s command, they beat Peralta until they got tired, and when he tried to get up, they beat him again. Flores-Mejia then stomped on his head, while Amaya-Ramirez choked him and Lazo-Villa punched him in the stomach, according to the feds. The status of Lazo-Villa was unclear Wednesday.
Peralta pleaded for his life and asked for his parents, so Flores-Mejia shoved dirt in his mouth, then stabbed him in the back with a kitchen knife when he stopped moving and slashed a crown tattoo off of his chest.
He handed the knife to Lazo-Villa for him to stab Peralta, and the group took a photo of themselves posing with MS-13 hand signs over Peralta’s body before dragging the teen to a small body of water, prosecutors said.
“The senselessness of this murder is matched only by its brutality,” U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella said. “The defendants lured Andy Peralta to a secluded part of Kissena Park where they beat him mercilessly before Amaya-Ramirez choked him to death and Flores-Mejia hacked at him with a knife. The murder of this teenager is a chilling reminder of MS-13’s callous disregard for human life.”
Flores-Mejia didn’t let his arrest for Peralta’s slaying slow down his enthusiasm for MS-13, prosecutors said. Last June, while locked up at the Hudson County Correctional Facility, he and several others from the gang attacked two fellow inmates, stabbing them with pens and other items, resulting in one of the victims being hospitalized.
