Authorities believe members of MS-13 killed an 18-year-old man whose body was found last summer on some trails near the James River, bringing to at least three the number of attacks attributed by investigators to local members of the national street gang.
Richmond police officials said Wednesday that two 16-year-old males have been charged with first-degree murder and other offenses in the death of Osbin Noel Hernandez-Gonzales of Chesterfield County. A passer-by found his body July 24 in the 8200 block of Riverside Drive on the south side of the river near the Huguenot Bridge. He died of gunshot wounds to the head.
Authorities believe that the two 16-year-old suspects, whose names have not been released by police because of their age, are members of MS-13 and were acting on another MS-13 member's order that Hernandez-Gonzales be killed, according to a source close to the investigation.
Richmond police officials and the commonwealth's attorney's office declined Wednesday to discuss any gang connection in the case. Authorities also have been reluctant to answer questions about the alleged involvement of MS-13 in a vicious stabbing last month in Richmond. A carjacking in Maryland also has been linked to Richmond-area MS-13 members.
Earlier this month, a Richmond prosecutor warned during a bond hearing in Richmond Circuit Court of the dangers posed by Jose A. Bran, one of five alleged MS-13 members charged in the Jan. 14 stabbing of a man in South Richmond.
The prosecutor, Ann Cabell Baskervill, told a judge that Bran is an admitted MS-13 member who ordered a hit on the stabbing victim.
The victim, 21, was abducted near Jefferson Davis Highway and Terminal Avenue in South Richmond and stabbed as many as seven times by multiple assailants inside a vehicle, police said.
The victim was left behind in the 3800 block of Terminal Avenue. He was critically wounded but survived.
Bran and the four other suspects in the stabbing have been indicted on a total of more than three dozen charges in the case.
Sgt. George Norris, a gang investigator for the police in Prince George's County, Md., said this month that authorities in Maryland arrested a suspected MS-13 member from Chesterfield in a carjacking that occurred Jan. 30 in Bowie, Md.
Norris identified the suspect as Efrain Ernesto Pineda-Martinez, 20, who was charged with armed carjacking, armed robbery and related charges. Norris said charges were pending in the case against two other MS-13 members from Chesterfield.
The two 16-year-old males charged in the death of Hernandez-Gonzales were arrested last week and are being held in juvenile detention. The investigation is ongoing.
The two suspects have preliminary hearings set for next month in Richmond Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court.
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