More News

The youngest of 10 alleged gang members charged in the January murder of a Langley Park 15-year-old has been jailed outside of the county for fear for her safety, prosecutors said.

In court filings, the Montgomery County State's Attorney's Office said Ana Abarca of Reston, Va., is a "potential target for violence" at the county jail.

The woman, who turned 18 in April, struck a plea deal last week that will send her to prison for a maximum of five years for her role in the death of Dennys Guzman-Saenz.

Police said Guzman-Saenz, 15, was abducted from a bus stop in Hyattsville Jan. 18, taken to Gaithersburg, stabbed 72 times and dumped in a creek.

Police and prosecutors say that all 10 defendants are members of the 18th Street gang, which has a violent rivalry with the gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13.

Court records say Abarca pleaded guilty to being an "accessory after the fact," which carries a five-year maximum sentence. At a June 29 plea hearing, Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Marielsa A. Bernard agreed to postpone Abarca's sentencing "until all the co-defendants have either pled or their trials have been completed." That is expected to take more than six months.

Montgomery County Assistant State's Attorneys Jeffrey Wennar and Amy Bliss asked to move her because administrators at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility are "concerned for the continued safety of the defendant, and the overall safety of the facility," according to court records.

MS-13 members would "likely" attack Abarca if they find her, prosecutors wrote: "It has been reported that MS 13 members are displaying copies of newspaper articles discussing the events of January 18th and the arrest of the defendant."

Bernard's order granting Abarca's relocation has been sealed by the court, and Bernard agreed to block the conversation from the court recording.

The June 29 hearing lasted nearly an hour as Abarca, who said she had a 10th-grade education, struggled at times to understand the proceedings. During one of several exchanges, Abarca told Bernard that she had only recently began considering pleading.

"As you know, everyone read in the newspaper," she said in Spanish. "So with all that, they said it's better that I plead guilty and so I thought it would be better."

She was a student at South Lakes High School in Reston until six weeks before Guzman-Saenz's death, a Fairfax County Public Schools spokeswoman said. Abarca had been in the school system since November 2004.

Prosecutors said they do not believe Abarca ever stabbed or assaulted Guzman-Saenz. Rather, she rode in the front passenger seat as she and four others went to Langley Park in search of an MS-13 member to take to Germantown as a "present" to mark the 18th, which holds special significance, prosecutors have said.

Two of the 18th Street members saw Guzman-Saenz at a bus stop in Hyattsville, spoke to him and thought he was in MS-13. Police have said that Guzman-Saenz knew MS-13 members, but was not in the gang.

After picking up other alleged gang members in Germantown, two cars went to Malcolm King Park in Gaithersburg. There, they dragged Guzman out of the car and took him to a creek, where they "took turns" stabbing him, prosecutors said Abarca told them. Abarca stayed in the car with Ysaud Flores in his car, acting as lookouts. Flores, 30, whose most recent address was in Montgomery Village, was indicted for murder and other charges last month.

As Wennar explained in a brief statement he read in court June 29, Abarca told Flores to clean blood in the car after Joel Yonathan Ventura-Quintanilla and others returned from the creek.

"She had seen blood on the ceiling lining of the car and had information that Ventura-Quintanilla wiped his bloody hand on the rear of the right front seat," Wennar said in court. When police searched the car, they found four streaks of blood that "coincided with what would have been a handprint," Wennar said.

Ventura-Quintanilla was also indicted last month on murder and other charges.