5 Accused Of Killing Nassau Girl Over Gang Affiliation

GLEN COVE, NY — Five people police say are connected to the violent MS-13 street gang have been accused of luring a 16-year-old Glen Cove girl to a park and killing her in Maryland due to her suspected affiliation with a rival gang.

As Patch previously reported, a passerby on May 29 made a grisly discovery: The body of Gabriella Alejandra Gonzales Ardon was found along the wooded Merryman Trail near Loch Raven Reservoir in Cockeysville, Maryland. Her body was near the edge of a stream at the bottom of a slope. The Medical Examiner's Office there deemed her death a homicide.

Gabriella was reported missing in July 2019, again in late February and a third time in March. On March 26, police said the girl could be headed to Baltimore, about 13 miles south of Cockeysville.

On Monday, Baltimore County police said they arrested five people between the ages of 16 and 21 in connection with her killing. The five are believed to be affiliated with MS-13 and were already in custody at the Baltimore County Detention Center on other charges, police said. Three are from Baltimore and two had no fixed addresses.

The following people face charges of first-degree murder and related charges:

• Jonathan Pesquera-Puerto, 19, of South Newkirk Street
• Edys Valenzuella-Rodriguez, 20, of Dundalk Avenue
• Wualter Hernandez-Orellana, 19, no fixed address
• Asael Ezequie Gonzalez-Merlos, 16, of Baltimore Street (charged as an adult)
• Wilson Art Constanza-Galdomez, 21, no fixed address

Homicide investigators believe Gabriella knew her killers and they lured her to the park where she was killed, police said. They killed her due to her possible affiliation with a rival gang, police said.

All five suspects remain jailed at the Baltimore County Detention Center. No bail has been set.

Pesquera-Puerto, Valenzuela-Rodriguez and Hernandez-Orellana were arrested in June and face charges of second-degree attempted murder, assault and kidnapping after two teenagers were stabbed in Dundalk, southeast of Baltimore, The Baltimore Sun reported.

The MS-13 gang has between 50,000 and 70,000 members, mostly concentrated in urban areas in Central America or locations outside the region where there is a large Central American diaspora, according to a report by InSight Crime and the Center for Latin American & Latino Studies posted on the U.S. Justice Department website.

"Expansion beyond urban areas has also happened in places in the United States, most notably in Long Island and North Carolina, and increasingly California," the report said.

President Donald Trump traveled to Brentwood in July 2017 after the area saw an uptick in violence related to the gang. Four teens were murdered in Central Islip in April of that year, seven months after two teenage girls were killed in Brentwood.

"They were just part of a string of 17 murders prosecutors blamed on the Mara Salvatrucha, or MS13, in the previous 18 months," the report said.

Gang-related killings are suspected to represent about 13 percent of all homicides in America, according to the National Gang Center.

In Suffolk County, authorities said MS-13 was responsible for 17 of the 45 killings in the county from January 2016 through May 2017.

In March 2019, six MS-13 gang members were charged with conspiracy to commit two murders. Two months later, an MS-13 gang member pleaded guilty to charges in connection to the attempted killing of a suspected rival gang member outside the Brentwood Public Library and the murder of a fellow gang member for violating the gang's rules. And in June of this year, federal officials said they would seek the death penalty for an MS-13 gang member accused of killing seven people, including two young girls on Long Island. In the latest case, Alexi Saenz, who authorities said was the leader of the Brentwood chapter of the Sailors gang, was among two dozen MS-13 members charged with racketeering in connection with multiple killings and planned homicides on Long Island.

The gang's frequent, public acts of violence often have "no deeper meaning or purpose" other than to illustrate devotion to the gang, a manifestation of ruthlessness towards the outside world, or both, the MS-13 report said.

"In El Salvador, the gang is training, increasing its capacity and professionalizing," the report said. "But in places like Long Island, Maryland and Massachusetts, the gang appears to be flailing with little purpose other than to commit barbarous, often symbolic acts of violence designed to exert social control and show 'commitment' to the gang."

This is the trail where Gabriella Alejandra Gonzales Ardon's body was found: