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Long Island’s “Little Devil” smiled as MS-13 gang members hacked four men to death with machetes — and even “licked the blood off her lips” during the massacre, prosecutors said Wednesday in closing arguments at her murder trial.
Leniz “Diablita” Escobar, 22, lured the men to their deaths in a local park after convincing the notoriously vicious gang that the victims “had mocked them” by using MS-13 symbols, prosecutor Justina Geraci said in federal court in Central Islip.
“You heard [MS-13 gang member] David Gaitan-Rivera’s testimony,” Geraci told the jury of the 2017 slayings. “He told you how one of the victims had reached for [Escobar] before he was killed and his blood had gotten all over her shirt.
“He told you how she licked the blood off her lips.”
Another witness, Escobar’s friend Keyli Gomez, had testified about “how she and the defendant had crouched down by the victims and watched as they were killed. Not screaming or crying while the victims were macheted to death.
“And how just before [victim] Michael Lopez was hacked to death, how she smiled,” Geraci said.
Escobar continued to smile and joke around with her defense team during the prosecutor’s chilling summation. She wore her hair in a ponytail and had bright chrome piercings protruding from her cheeks.
Prosecutors say Lopez, 20, and three pals — Justin Llivicura, 16, Jorge Tigre, 18, and Jefferson Villalobos, 18 — were executed
by MS-13 after several of them posted photos online throwing gang signs, a feeble effort to attract girls.
Escobar and Gomez allegedly lured them to the Central Islip park to smoke marijuana, as a mob of MS-13 gangsters waited to ambush them.
Only one of the intended victims, Elmer Alexander Arteaga Ruiz, made it out alive by running for his life — and lived to testify against Escobar.
“Alex was a poser and that’s why he was marked for death,” Geraci said of Ruiz. “He thought this stuff would attract girls and it did — but not in the way he had hoped.”
Others testifying in the trial included Escobar’s boyfriend, an MS-13 gang member, who said his then-17-year-old girlfriend told the gang “they were being overrun by ‘chivales’ [rivals] and they had no balls,” Geraci said.
Prosecutors also presented recorded phone calls Escobar had with her boyfriend, calling them “devastating” to her claim that she was innocent.
“She was telling her boyfriend exactly what happened,” Assistant US Attorney Paul Scotti told jurors. “She told him she killed those four young men and she was happy about it. She was happy.”
Escobar’s lawyers have claimed at the trial that she did not know the victims would be attacked.
During his closing argument, defense attorney Jesse Siegel said his client wasn’t an MS-13 member or associate — she only dated one of the gangsters.
“Not every girlfriend is an associate,” Siegel told jurors. “Her boyfriend was a homeboy.
“She was there. She certainly didn’t prevent it from happening,” he said. “The issue is if she knew something was going to happen.”
Siegel then stumbled, telling the jury, “you should find her guilty, excuse me, you should find her not guilty.”
Outside the courthouse, Siegel said the jury — which is due to start deliberations Thursday morning — should ignore the claims of gang members who cut deals to testify against Escobar.
“The jury should not rely on the witnesses that the government put forward, meaning these cooperating witnesses who are all extremely bad people who are testifying pursuant to cooperation agreements,” he said.
“She had always wanted to have her day in court,” Siegel added. “I think she’s satisfied that she’s had her day in court. And she is nervous, but looking forward to getting a verdict.”
Escobar also had defenders among the audience in the courtroom.
“She had a very difficult life since she was very young,” her cousin, Cindy Escobar, told reporters outside the courtroom. “[She] didn’t have a father. Didn’t have a mother. Didn’t have a stable childhood. So, we can see. You guys have a totally different picture.
“But we know that God is with her and God has her in her hands.”
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