MS-13 member who helped kill Ohio teen with a machete dies in troubled Brooklyn prison

An MS-13 member serving a greater than 17-year sentence for collaborating in a 2015 gang-related killing of an Ohio teenager died early Sunday in a troubled federal lockup in Brooklyn, authorities mentioned.

Erasmo Humberto Lima-Martinez, 35, was discovered unresponsive at 12:51 a.m. within the Metropolitan Detention Middle, the Federal Bureau of Prisons introduced Sunday.

Medics rushed the inmate to a hospital, the place he was pronounced lifeless, in keeping with the BOP. Sources told Associated Press reporter Mike Balsamo that Lima-Martinez died by suicide.

Lima-Martinez had been detained within the Sundown Park facility since Might 3, the BOP mentioned.

He pleaded responsible in 2019 for his function within the slaying of 17-year-old highschool scholar Wilson Villeda in Columbus, Ohio.

Villeda, a local of El Salvador, was thought of to be affiliated with a rival gang, prompting MS-13 leaders within the Central American nation to log out on his homicide.

Members of the bloodthirsty gang, together with Lima-Martinez, took Villeda to a park, the place they hacked him to dying with machetes and different blades, earlier than dumping his physique in a wooded space, in keeping with the the US Legal professional’s Workplace for the Southern District of Ohio.

One among Villeda’s arms was severed, the Columbus Dispatch reported on the time, citing courtroom information. Individuals strolling their canines within the park found Villeda’s physique in a shallow grave in December 2015, in keeping with the native newspaper.

Lima-Martinez, additionally recognized “Tun Tun,” was sentenced to 17.5 years in jail for homicide in help of racketeering.

He was amongst 23 folks charged in a February 2018 indictment for being alleged members and associates of MS-13 in Columbus. Lima-Martinez additionally participated in trafficking cocaine, marijuana and heroin for the gang, in keeping with federal prosecutors.

His dying is the most recent fatality within the infamous federal jail, the place greater than 1,700 individuals are detained.

In June 2020, an inmate on the MDC died after being pepper sprayed by jail officers. A federal lawsuit filed in June 2021 by the household of the inmate charged that Brooklyn jail guards stood by as he “slowly died” and didn’t correctly reply to his psychological well being episode.

In 2019, a gaggle of attorneys filed a lawsuit in regards to the “humanitarian disaster” on the jail that had left prisoners with out electrical energy or warmth for weeks. The situations within the detention facility on the time prompted a Division of Justice probe.

Amid the facility outage, a former warden on the jail, Cameron Lindsay, advised the New York Instances that previously decade has been “probably the most troubled, if not essentially the most troubled facility within the Bureau of Prisons.”

The deaths comes a month after federal prosecutors threatened to position the New York Metropolis’s beleaguered jail system underneath management of a receivership if harmful and dysfunctional situations at Rikers Island don’t enhance.