Who's Ever Morales-Lopez? MS-13 gangster facing murder charge mistakenly freed by NY jail, FBI notice 5 days later
An MS-13 gang member facing federal murder charge was mistakenly released by New York prison officials. But he was put behind bars after five days, as per Daily Mail.
On September 3, Ever Morales-Lopez, 26, was granted early parole for a 2018 conspiracy conviction on Long Island and released from the medium-security Washington Correctional Facility in Comstock, according to the New York Post. However, there was a federal arrest warrant for Morales-Lopez lodged with the National Crime Information Center after he was indicted in July, along with seven other reputed MS-13 members. There were racketeering charges that cover six murders, two attempted murders and a kidnapping conspiracy, a law enforcement source familiar with his case said. That warrant was to ensure that he was transferred to federal custody until trial, the source said.
A state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) spokesperson said the agency never received a physical warrant, needed to hold Morales-Lopez, so they released him to community supervision in accordance with state law, as per the NY Post report. Until September 8, the FBI wasn’t aware that Morales-Lopez had been cut loose. But the FBI-Long Island Gang Task Force members tracked him down and arrested him within 12 hours, the source told NY Post. The FBI was assisted by state prison officials in arresting him after being contacted by the bureau, the DOCCS spokesperson said. After the arrest, Morales-Lopez was taken to Central Islip federal court and ordered to be held without bail, based on a judge’s findings that he posed a “serious risk” of flight and “danger to the community,” court records show.
Who is Ever Morales-Lopez?
Nicknamed ‘White Boy’ and ‘Lenky’, Morales-Lopez is accused in the murder of Kerin Pineda – a rival gang member who was lured to a secluded, wooded area near the Merrick-Freeport border on May 21, 2016, according to NY Post.
He was allegedly one of three people who kept an eye for cops as several MS-13 members used machetes to hack Pineda to death and bury him in a grave that had been dug a day earlier. One of the charges against him, murder in aid of racketeering, carries either a mandatory life sentence or the death penalty, as stated in the report. But prosecutors haven’t decided whether to seek capital punishment. Before his release, he was serving a sentence of three-and-a-half to 10½ years after pleading guilty to two counts of conspiracy in Nassau County in 2018, as per the report. That sentence followed his arrest with 16 other members and associates of MS-13 on charges that included murder, conspiracy to commit murder and drug trafficking.
The allegations against him involve scouting a place in New Jersey without any nearby surveillance cameras to kill a rival gang member, and discussing where to bury the victim’s body and how deep to dig the hole, according to NY Post. Pineda was believed to be a member of the 18th Street gang, as per Daily Mail. It isn’t clear when he’s due back in court.