A Queens birdwatcher described the harrowing second he noticed the corpse of an adolescent whose homicide was allegedly ordered by an MS-13 gang boss — telling a Brooklyn federal jury Wednesday, “I noticed an individual face down.”
Eric Miller, of Bayside, was trying to find birds on a path in Queens’ Alley Pond Park on the morning of Could 21, 2017, when he caught a whiff of a foul scent, he testified in the course of the homicide trial of alleged ruthless gang chief Melvi Amador-Rios.
“I encountered a scent of decomposition,” Miller mentioned, calling it “overwhelming.”
“I figured it was a raccoon,” he mentioned — till he walked nearer and acquired a greater glimpse via his binoculars.
“I noticed an individual face down” from about 20 ft away,” Miller recalled. “I regarded out with the binoculars and will see [the body] was coated with maggots.”
The corpse belonged to 16-year-old Julio Vasquez, whose hit was allegedly ordered by Amador-Rios, 32, the reputed boss of the Centrales Locos Salvatruchas clique of MS-13.
Vasquez was stabbed greater than 30 occasions and practically decapitated after prosecutors say he disobeyed an order to kill — and Amador-Rios started suspecting he was a snitch working with regulation enforcement.
The teenager was lured to the park, the place gang members Josue Leiva and Luis Rivas knifed him to dying on Could 16, 2017, in response to prosecutors.
NYPD officer Nicholas Kostas, of the 111th Precinct in Bayside, Queens, testified he responded to a name in regards to the teen’s physique 4 days later.
“I seen the physique was mendacity face down with a blue hat mendacity subsequent to it,” he advised the jury Wednesday.
Leiva and Rivas have beforehand pleaded responsible to fees in reference to Vasquez’s homicide.
Amador-Rios, aka “Letal” or “Pinky,” is standing trial on fees of racketeering, homicide in assist of racketeering, and associated crimes.
He faces a life sentence if convicted.
