MS-13 gang member who was part of ‘reign of terror’ in Fresno County city gets life sentence

An MS-13 gang member Wednesday was sentenced to life in federal prison for the 2017 kidnapping and murder of a Mendota man. Authorities say Israel Alberto Rivas Gomez, 28, took part in a reign of terror by gang members who victimized residents in the western Fresno County city from 2015 to 2017.

The sentence was announced by U.S. Attorney Phillip A. Talbert, who called the murder “preplanned, carefully orchestrated, driven by allegiance to MS-13, and deserving of a life sentence.”

Rivas Gomez was one of 25 MS-13 gang members in 2018 in a multi-agency operation launched in response to more than a dozen murders in Mendota blamed on the gang by state and federal officials. Residents believe MS-13 was active in the city for a decade before the operation was launched.

“The gruesome homicides ... were committed to intimidate the community, and further the efforts of MS-13 to exploit the community,” said FBI Special Agent Sean Ragan.

Extortion letters sent to businesses

Businesses in Mendota were also targeted with extortion letters by gang members, according to residents.

Rivas Gomez reportedly kidnapped the victim, who was not named by federal officials, drove him to a remote location and use a knife and a machete to murder him in furtherance of MS-13’s criminal gang enterprise.

MS-13 originated in Los Angeles neighborhoods after Salvadoran refugees fled a civil war in their home country in the 1980s, according to the online website Insight Crime. It is widely considered to be one of the world’s largest multi-national gangs, reaching from Central America to Europe.

In another brutal homicide linked to the gang, five teens in Long Island, New York, were hacked to death, also in 2017, by more than a dozen members of the gang, according to The Guardian.

Crackdown in El Salvador

Recently, Salvadoran populist leader Nayib Bukele jailed more than 64,000 people, including many MS-13 members, in a controversial effort to break the gang and bring down the nation’s murder rate.