Police ID All Victims In Quadruple Murder At Long Island Park

Suffolk County Police have now identified all four of the young men who were found brutally murdered in a Long Island park Wednesday night.

The victims are 16-year-old Justin Llivicura, of East Patchogue, 20-year-old Michael Banegas, of Brentwood, 18-year-old Jorge Tigre, of Bellport, and 18-year-old Jefferson Villalobos, of Pompano Beach, Fla., police said.

Banegas and Villalobos were cousins and Villalobos was visiting from Florida, according to multiple reports.

The bodies of the men were dismembered; Llivicura's ear and at least one of his limbs were cut off, relatives told ABC 7.

Police believe members of the international gang MS-13 are behind the murders.

"The manner in which they were killed is consistent with the modus operandi of MS-13," Suffolk County Police Commissioner Tim Sini said.

All four victims were killed in one incident that occurred within the past few days, and they each suffered significant trauma with a sharp-edged instrument, police said.

Police believe the victims were killed where they were found: at Central Islip Recreation Village Park on Clayton Street in Central Islip, across the street from an elementary school.

The body of one of the men was so badly disfigured that he could only be identified from a tattoo, ABC 7 reported.

Tigre's brother, William Tigre, told the New York Times that he received a phone call Wednesday night from a man named Alex who told him, “I see your brother, he was getting killed.”

The bodies were found just a few miles from where police say MS-13 gang members killed numerous people, including Brentwood High School students Nisa Mickens and Kayla Cuevas last year. Thirteen MS-13 members have been charged in connection to seven murders in Brentwood over the past several years.

Yency Fuentes, a cousin of Villalobos, told CBS 2 that a friend who had escaped the attackers at the park shared this horrifying detail, “A group of them came out with machetes and was yelling at them telling them to kneel down."

Anyone with information on the murders is asked to call anonymously to Crime Stoppers at 1-800-220-TIPS. Crime Stoppers is offering a fast cash reward of $25,000 for information that leads to an arrest. The cash will be rewarded within 72 hours of the arrest.

“The Suffolk County Police Department is doing everything in our power to solve these murders. It’s all hands on deck,” Sini said Thursday. “We are working closely with the FBI to solve these homicides.”

Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels, told Patch last year that when thousands of young people were sent to the United States “in many instances to escape the threats of MS-13 and other affiliated gangs, many have settled in the Nassau and Suffolk County area. About 3,000 in total. MS-13 has gone out of their way to try to recruit these youngsters with varied success.”

Photo by Evan Rolla