Six indicted for murder of Langley Park teen
15-year-old was stabbed to death in Gaithersburg's Malcolm King Park in January
Six alleged members of the 18th Street gang have been indicted in connection with the killing of a 15-year-old found stabbed to death in a Gaithersburg park in January, according to a statement from the Montgomery County State's Attorney's Office.
Dennys Alfredo Guzman-Saenz was kidnapped from a bus stop in Langley Park on Jan. 18, taken to Malcolm King Park and stabbed multiple times because his assailants believed he was in the gang MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, police have said. He was found by a maintenance worker the next day.
Six of the 10 people who have been charged by police were indicted on Thursday for murder, conspiracy to commit murder, participation in gang activity resulting in death, kidnapping, conspiracy to commit kidnapping and participation in a gang activity resulting in kidnapping, according to the statement.
Those indicted were Ysaud Flores, 30, of Montgomery Village; Joel Yonathan Ventura-Quintanilla, 22, of no fixed address; Edwin Antonio Lopez, 21, of Wheaton; Silvia Martinez, 20, of Washington, D.C.; David Antonio Lozano, 32, of Germantown; and Francis Emerson Artiga-Cardoza, 23, of Manassas, Va., according to the State's Attorney's Office.
They will be the first to be tried under the state's gang activity statute since it went into effect on Oct. 1, 2007.
Convictions under the law require that prosecutors prove a defendant is a member of a gang and committed a violent crime to advance the gang's goals or at the gang's direction, the law states.
The law allows a judge to impose an additional maximum penalty of 20 years for each count of participating in a gang crime, Assistant State's Attorney Jeffrey Wennar, who is prosecuting the case, told The Gazette last month.
The other four charged in connection to the killing — Ana Abarca, 18, of Reston, Va.; Joel Antonio Lovo-Reyes, 29, of Bladensburg; Daniel A. Zavala, 26, of no fixed address; and Ana Villatoro, 17, of Washington, D.C. — are still under investigation, according to Emily White, a State's Attorney's Office spokeswoman. They are all charged with first-degree murder and kidnapping.