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Six men and three women, all affiliated with or members of the 18th Street gang, have been arrested in connection with the abduction and stabbing death of a Langley Park teen whose body was found four months ago near a stream in Gaithersburg.
Montgomery County Police are continuing their investigation into the slaying of Dennys Guzman-Saenz, 15, of 14th Avenue, who was abducted from a bus stop Jan. 18, driven to a Gaithersburg park and stabbed 72 times by a group that included a convicted murderer who had escaped from an El Salvadorian prison, according to prosecutors and court records.
Police and prosecutors sketched Guzman-Saenz's final hour from interviews with suspects authorities allege were involved in his abduction and beating. Eighteenth Street gang members called the teen a "present" and bought beer to celebrate the slaying.
Attempts to reach Guzman-Saenz's family were unsuccessful.
After a tip from an unnamed source, police arrested Joel Yonathan Ventura-Quintanilla, 22, Thursday in a targeted traffic stop in Wheaton. His roommate at the time of the killing, David Antonio Lozano, 32, of the 13100 block of Wonderland Way in Germantown, was arrested Friday. They are charged with first-degree murder in Guzman-Saenz's slaying.
Police also arrested and charged Ana Abarca, 18, of Reston, Va., and Ysaud Flores, 30, of the 9500 block of Tippett Lane in Gaithersburg, with first-degree murder, kidnapping and armed robbery. Joel Antonio Lovo-Reyes, 29, of 58th Avenue in Bladensburg, was charged with first-degree murder and kidnapping.
Daniel A. Zavala, 26, and Silvia Martinez, 19, of Washington, D.C., were arrested in Washington on Sunday on a warrant charging them with first-degree murder, kidnapping and kidnapping a child under 16. They remain in custody there awaiting extradition to Maryland, according to a D.C. court database.
On Tuesday, Montgomery County Police spokeswoman Lucille Baur confirmed two more arrests: Francis E. Artiga-Cardoza, 22, of the 9400 block of Abingdon Court in Manassas was charged with first-degree murder, kidnapping and kidnapping a child under the age of 16. A female was in police custody, Baur said, but had not been charged as of Gazette press time.
All nine suspects are members of or are affiliated with the 18th Street gang, police said. The gang is a California-based group that locally rivals the violent gang MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha.
So far, 18th Street gang members have been more prevalent in the upcounty "but have not been involved in criminal activity up until this incident," Baur said.
"What is unusual is that now there is a member who came here from El Salvador ... was able to have influence with others in the metro area and committed this most violent act in Montgomery County," she said.
Charging documents filed in court detail the following sequence of events:
At about 7:30 p.m. Jan. 18, six of the suspects were driving in Langley Park looking for MS-13 members. When they saw Guzman-Saenz at a bus stop, two of the suspects posed as MS-13 and questioned Guzman-Saenz to see if he was in the gang. Police say Guzman-Saenz was not in MS-13 but had friends who were. His answers prompted the 18th Street gang members to abduct him.
Guzman-Saenz was stabbed once in the car in Langley Park, according to a brief account given by Assistant State's Attorney Jeffrey Wennar at bond hearings for four of the suspects on Monday.
En route to Gaithersburg, the suspects called Lozano to tell him of a "present" MS-13 member, and stabbed Guzman-Saenz as they drove to Malcolm King Park, according to charging documents. Lozano and others met them there. Guzman-Saenz was dragged from the vehicle, stabbed and beaten in the park, then dumped into a stream, according to the documents.
Abarca and Flores robbed Guzman-Saenz of $10. Quintanilla-Ventura told police that he and Lozano bought beer to celebrate the slaying, according to the documents.
A passerby found Guzman-Saenz's body early the next morning, police said.
Anonymous tip
The police investigation stemmed from a suspect's alleged boast, according to charging documents.
An unnamed source told police that a man known only by his nickname Jhony — later identified as Ventura-Quintanilla — had "bragged" that he abducted and "butchered" a young male from Langley Park, the documents state.
Detectives narrowed in on Jhony's known associates. On Thursday, police saw three of them enter a vehicle in Wheaton. Police stopped the vehicle after several traffic violations, and found Ventura-Quintanilla trying to hide a 12-inch knife. He and the three others were taken into custody, police said.
Ventura-Quintanilla told police he "came straight to Maryland" after escaping from an El Salvador prison on Aug. 2, where he had been arrested for homicide and gun trafficking.
Flores, who police say drove the car the night of Guzman-Saenz's slaying, gave a Gaithersburg address and phone number after his arrest, police said.
A woman who answered a call from a reporter to that phone Monday said that Flores had been renting a room there for three months and did not have a job. She said she did not know he had been arrested.
"When he was here, he was a humble guy; he didn't get involved with anybody," the woman said.
Ventura-Quintanilla, Lozano, Abarca and Flores remain in county custody after appearing from jail via satellite at bond hearings Monday in District Court. They said little, asking for the public defender to represent them. Judge Barry A. Hamilton denied bail for Ventura-Quintanilla and Lozano, and agreed to defer bond hearings for Abarca and Flores until today so that the public defender's office could meet with them.