An MS-13 member serving a more than 17-year sentence for participating in the 2015 gang-related murder of an Ohio teenager died early Sunday at a troubled federal prison in Brooklyn, authorities said .
Erasmo Humberto Lima-Martinez, 35, was found unconscious at 12:51 a.m. at the Metropolitan Detention Center, the Federal Bureau of Prisons said Sunday.
Doctors transported the inmate to hospital, where he was pronounced dead, according to the BOP. Sources told Associated Press reporter Mike Balsamo that Lima-Martinez committed suicide.
Lima-Martinez had been detained at the Sunset Park facility since May 3, the BOP said.
He pleaded guilty in 2019 to his role in the murder of 17-year-old high school student Wilson Villeda in Columbus, Ohio.
Villeda, originally from El Salvador, was believed to be affiliated with a rival gang, prompting the Central American country’s MS-13 leaders to approve of her killing.
Members of the bloodthirsty gang, including Lima-Martinez, took Villeda to a park, where they killed him with machetes and other blades, before dumping his body in a wooded area, According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio.
One of Villeda’s arms was cut off, the Columbus dispatch reported at the time, citing court records. People walking their dogs in the park discovered Villeda’s body in a shallow grave in December 2015, according to the local newspaper.
Lima-Martinez, also known as “Tun Tun”, was sentenced to 17.5 years in prison for murder for profit racketeering.
He was among 23 people charged in a February 2018 indictment for allegedly being members and associates of MS-13 in Columbus. Lima-Martinez also participated in trafficking cocaine, marijuana and heroin for the gang, according to federal prosecutors.
His death is the latest death in the notorious federal prison, where more than 1,700 people are held.
In June 2020, an MDC inmate died after being pepper sprayed by prison officers. A federal lawsuit filed in June 2021 by the inmate’s family accused Brooklyn jail guards of staying away as he “died slowly” and failed to properly respond to his health episode. mental.
In 2019, a group of lawyers filed a complaint about the “humanitarian crisis” at the prison which had left prisoners without electricity or heating for weeks. Conditions in the detention center at the time prompted a Justice Department investigation.
Amid the power outage, a former prison warden, Cameron Lindsay, told the New York Times which for the past decade has been “one of the most troubled, if not the most troubled establishments in the Bureau of Prisons”.
The deaths come a month after federal prosecutors threatened to place New York’s beleaguered prison system under receivership if dangerous and dysfunctional conditions at Rikers Island did not improve.
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