Two members of the gang MS-13 were convicted Tuesday of a brutal machete attack that left a man nearly decapitated seven years ago, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office said.
Jose Rafael Andrade-Membreno, 29, and Edwin Diaz, 25, both of Mission Viejo, were convicted on one count each of first-degree murder with a special circumstance of lying in wait, conspiracy to commit murder and an enhancement of personally using a deadly weapon, the DA’s Office said in a news release.
Andrade-Membreno and Diaz, who were 22 and 18 years old, respectively, during the Oct. 1, 2018, attack, ambushed 25-year-old Marcos Morales as he was in a hot tub in Lake Forest with his girlfriend.
After Andrade-Membreno and Diaz attacked Morales in the hot tub, they chased him into an apartment stairwell, “where they continued the attack and left him to die,” OCDA said.
Morales, who was not a gang member and who tried to defend himself with a patio chair, was left “nearly decapitat[ed]” by the assault, which also nearly cut off his arm and resulted in at least 18 stab wounds, including to his brain, officials said.
Morales’ 18-year-old girlfriend, meanwhile, was stabbed by a girlfriend of one of the gang members.
The OCDA did not specifically name the third defendant, Xiomara Berrios, as the woman who attacked the girlfriend, but Berrios was charged with a felony count of assault with a deadly weapon in addition to murder and conspiracy charges.
Berrios, who is Diaz’s sister and was 18 years old at the time, “saw Morales and his 18-year-old girlfriend at the pool area of the apartment complex where they all lived” and allegedly let “her boyfriend know that Morales was there” before the couple agreed to kill Morales, officials added.
Berrios agreed to plead guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for her testimony.
Officials say blood evidence tied the trio to the killings when more than 50 neighbors declined to help police despite allegedly hearing “the murderers … screaming their allegiance to MS-13.”
At least some witnesses were ultimately located, however, as they testified that the attackers were “both laughing as they ran back from the final attack and jumped into a car to leave the crime scene.”
Andrade-Membreno and Diaz face a possibility of life in prison without parole when they’re sentenced on Jan. 23, 2026, and District Attorney Todd Spitzer said their callous responses to the killing is the reason why.
“The most terrifying monster is not the one under our beds but the human being who finds joy in inflicting violence on others,” said Spitzer. “The callousness and calculation involved in this murder was designed to brutalize their victim until his very last breath while striking fear in everyone who witnessed it. And these are exactly the kinds of criminals – murderers who kill before they turn 26 – that the California Legislature wants to allow to be eligible for parole and released back into our communities. Some crimes are so heinous that you must be removed from society, and the ruthless murder of Marcos Morales is one of those crimes.”
The post MS-13 members convicted of barbaric machete slaying 7 years ago appeared first on KTLA.
