This year, federal prosecutors have announced indictments tying MS-13 members to at least eight slayings in the Maryland and Virginia suburbs that took place in recent years, as well as extortion, rape and assault.
Armed with two machetes and a sawed-off shotgun, MS-13 gang members allegedly set off in a car last October to carry out an assassination at a location as brazen as it was chilling: a Prince William County school.
The plan was to shoot a wayward associate nicknamed “Peligroso,” or danger, as he left Gar-Field High School in Woodbridge after night classes wrapped up, according to a search warrant.
But the carload of armed gang members was stopped by authorities as they rolled into the school’s parking lot, court records show. An informant had tipped off police just a day earlier.
The narrowly averted hit was part of a nine-count indictment against members of MS-13 unsealed Friday in federal court in Alexandria. Thirteen purported gang members have been charged in connection with the attempted murder and with three killings across Northern Virginia and are in custody. Eleven of the defendants could face the death penalty or life in prison if convicted.
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