Freeport Man Sentenced To 42 Years In Prison In Connection With MS-13-Related Machete Murders: DOJ

FREEPORT, NY — A 26-year-old Freeport man was sentenced to 42 years in jail Tuesday after pleading guilty to his role in a pair of MS-13-related machete murders that took place in Freeport when he was 16-years-old, prosecutors said.

The U.S. Department of Justice said 26-year-old Kevin Cuevas Del Cid had pleaded guilty to participating in the 2016 murders of 20-year-old Kerin Pineda and 15-year-old Javier Castillo. Both Pineda and Castillo were killed because of their suspected membership in an MS-13 rival known as the 18th Street gang, prosecutors said.

In the days leading up to Pineda’s death, Del Cid created a fake facebook profile and posed as a woman “to communicate with Pineda and lure him out to be killed,” prosecutors said. According to the prosecution, Pineda went to a wooded area near the Merrick-Freeport border on May 21, 2016, under the impression that he would be meeting the woman he had been messaging on Facebook to smoke marijuana together.

Instead, “he was surrounded and violently attacked by Del Cid and the other MS-13 members, each of whom took turns hacking and slashing him with the machetes,” Prosecutors said. “Pineda’s body was then buried in a hole that had been dug in the ground the day before, in anticipation of the murder.”

As for the killing of Castillo, prosecutors said the 15-year-old was convinced to travel about 30 miles from his home in Central Islip to Freeport on October 10, 2016, to smoke marijuana with a group of people. When he arrived there, prosecutors said, he was killed.

“Del Cid and the other MS-13 members took Castillo to an isolated marsh area along the water in Cow Meadow Park in Freeport, where they attacked and killed him, taking turns hacking him with a machete,” prosecutors said. “Thereafter, the MS-13 members dug a hole and buried Castillo’s body, which was not recovered until one year later, in October 2017.”

Del Cid was arrested on July 20, 2017, the day after a wiretap picked up a conversation that featured discussions of murdering a third person, prosecutors said.

To date, six people including Del Cid have pleaded guilty to involvement in the Pineda murder, while more than that have been charged and pleaded guilty to playing roles in the Castillo murder, prosecutors said. Del Cid — 16 years-old at the time of both incidents — was initially charged as a minor before being transferred to trial as an adult in 2022, prosecutors said. The terms of his guilty plea dictated that he receive between 35 and 45 years of jail time, prosecutors said.