Gang leader admits murdering pimp
A leader of an Alexandria-based MS-13 chapter admitted to murdering a pimp during a robbery in Alexandria last summer.
Adolfo Portillo pleaded guilty, saying that he and two other MS-13 gang members posed as potential customers on July 29 and lured Carlos Luna to Alexandria. When he arrived, the men grabbed Luna’s prostitute, dragged her into Luna’s car and robbed them, Portillo admitted.
During the robbery, Portillo shot and killed Luna. He faces up to life in prison.
D.C. man convicted in hate-crime assault
A D.C. Superior Court jury convicted a 42-year-old District man of attacking his elderly neighbor because the neighbor was gay. Authorities said Anthony Wright verbally abused his 67-year-old gay neighbor for two years before he turned violent and punched the man in June 2009. Wright was arrested after the incident, but released. When he returned home, he continued to shout insults at his neighbor, then attacked him again in August. Wright faces up to 18 months in jail, six months more than a non-hate-crime-related assault.
D.C. man guilty of jury tampering
A District man was found guilty of obstruction of justice for jury tampering in a federal assault and weapons case. Prosecutors said Antoine Rose, 31, approached jurors during a lunch break with the baby of the man on trial, Johnnie Gamble, and told them that Gamble needed to be with his baby, not in jail. Gamble was found guilty of pointing a gun at a number of people in an apartment, threatening to kill them and then firing the gun through the door of that apartment. Rose is facing between five and nine years in prison.
Kidnapper gets 10 years
A D.C. man convicted of kidnapping a Clinton woman and her family was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Prince George’s County prosecutors had asked for 31 years behind bars for Yohannes Surafel, 25, an engineer, who was convicted of holding a bank worker, her husband and her two children hostage in a plot to rob a blank. The plot failed on the way to the bank after the father swerved the car in front of a Maryland state trooper, then overpowered Surafel.
Compiled by Freeman Klopott and Scott McCabe
