MS-13 member who helped kill Ohio teen with machete dies in troubled Brooklyn prison

An MS-13 member who was serving a more than 17-year sentence for involvement in the 2015 gang-related murder of an Ohio teenager died early Sunday in a troubled federal prison in Brooklyn, authorities said.

Erasmo Humberto Lima-Martinez, 35, was found unresponsive at the Metropolitan Detention Center at 12:51 a.m., the Federal Bureau of Prisons said Sunday.

Medics rushed the occupant to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead, according to the BOP. Sources Associated Press reporter Mike Balsamo said that Lima-Martinez died by 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 killing of 17-year-old high school student Wilson Villeda in Columbus, Ohio.

Villeda, who hails from El Salvador, was seen as a member of a rival gang, prompting MS-13 leaders in the Central American country to endorse his murder.

Members of the bloodthirsty gang, including Lima-Martinez, took Villeda to a park where they hacked him to death with machetes and other blades before dumping his body in a wooded area, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio.

One of Villeda’s arms was severed, the Columbus Dispatch reported at the time, citing court records. According to the local newspaper, people walking their dogs in the park discovered Villeda’s body in a shallow grave in December 2015.

Lima-Martinez, also known as “Tun Tun”, was sentenced to 17.5 years in prison for murder for the purpose of extortion.

He was among 23 people charged in a February 2018 indictment with being alleged members and associates of MS-13 in Columbus. Lima-Martinez was also involved in trafficking cocaine, marijuana and heroin for the gang, according to federal prosecutors.

His death is the latest death at the notorious federal penitentiary, which holds more than 1,700 people.

In June 2020, an inmate at the MDC died after being pepper sprayed by prison officials. A federal lawsuit filed in June 2021 by the inmate’s family blamed Brooklyn prison guards when he “slowly died” and failed to respond properly to his mental illness.

In 2019, a group of lawyers filed a lawsuit over the prison’s “humanitarian crisis,” which had left prisoners without power or heat for weeks. Conditions in the detention center at the time led to an investigation by the Justice Department.

Amid the blackout, a former warden at the prison, Cameron Lindsay, told the New York Times that it had been “one of, if not the, most troubled facilities in the Bureau of Prisons” in the past decade.

The death comes a month after federal prosecutors threatened to place New York City’s beleaguered prison system under receivership control if dangerous and dysfunctional conditions on Rikers Island don’t improve.