G. Zachary Terwilliger, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia says that Northern Virginia has a gang problem inasmuch as they are ignoring the problem in what Terwilliger says is a nod to political correctness.
Terwilliger made his comments at the sentencing of two MS-13 gang members.
Juan Francisco Rivera-Pineda and Jefferson Noe Amaya, two members of an MS-13 clique called ‘Pinos Locos Salvatrucha’ were convicted of shooting and stabbing of a 40-year-old victim in a Henrico, Virginia, park on Dec. 30, 2018.
They had been arguing over the turf used for dealing drugs.
Terwilliger accused local officials of lacking courage for political correctness to go after this type of crime and says they are putting Hispanics at risk by ignoring the problem.
Terwilliger said:
“By burying their heads in the sand and lacking the courage to address a problem because they mistakenly deem it to be politically incorrect, various community leaders in Northern Virginia simply refuse to acknowledge the gang problem to the detriment of the same Hispanic community they claim to be defending.”
“No one suffers more at the hands of MS-13 than other individuals of Central American birth or ancestry,” he continued.
Both gang members pleaded guilty to assault with a dangerous weapon in aid of racketeering activity and discharging a firearm during a violent crime. They were sentenced to a combined total of 28 years in prison.
MS-13, which originated in El Salvador, has spread to most major U.S. cities over the past decade. Virginia’s Washington, D.C., suburbs have seen a wave of high-profile MS-13 cases in recent years.
Terwilliger said that MS-13 gang members routinely extort minority-owned businesses in Hispanic communities, sexually traffic first-generation Americans, and “brutally assault and even murder Hispanic boys and girls who they believe have disrespected the gang.”
