Montgomery Police Charge Five More In Stabbings

Sarai said he joined MS-13 in El Salvador "for protection" and came to the United States illegally when he was 19. He has worked as a carpenter and promised her he would leave the gang, she said. He served 13 months in jail on the accessory charge and was released in February, she said.

"He told me he was never going to get arrested again, and now he goes out and does something stupid anyway," Sarai said. "I'm so disappointed now."

Defendant Jorge Arbaiza, charged Monday in the Wheaton attack, was supposed to enter the ninth grade in the fall. His mother's boyfriend, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being targeted, said Arbaiza hangs out with members of MS-13, but he said he didn't believe that Arbaiza was a member. He said the gang is brazen and pressures young kids to join.

"The youth don't know what's important. They don't know what to do," he said. "The jobs they can get aren't exits to anywhere. They aren't solutions to avoid the Maras ."

The world of knives and gangs seems almost incomprehensible to defendant Henry Caballero's family. Caballero, charged last week in the Wheaton attack, is a diligent, affable young man who worked at Whole Foods Grocery on P Street NW in the District, loved to dance and hug and who was planning to get his driver's license and marry his girlfriend, his parents said.

The porch light outside their four-bedroom home in Langley Park was still on at 2 a.m. Saturday when Caballero, 20, called his parents. They said his voice was serene.

"Mama, excuse me, I'm not home because I'm in jail," he said, according to Caballero's mother, Blanca Chavez. "I'm in jail, but I'm innocent. I didn't run away, because I did nothing wrong."

His father, Jose Caballero, who drives a produce truck for a Baltimore company, fled the violence of El Salvador's civil war 23 years ago to come to Washington and raise his family. His son told him he fought with his fists only.

"He defended himself like a man, hand to hand, boxing," said Caballero. "I am his father, and I believe him. He had a knife, but he didn't take it out of his pocket.''

"He's an exemplary son," Chavez said. "He's not capable of putting a knife in another boy's body."

Now family members are afraid they could be the target of gang violence. They pasted blue construction paper over the windows of the front door. A cousin came over to offer to help protect them; a neighbor said he would train his surveillance camera on their yard.

Cabellero's parents don't know all of what their son was involved in outside the house, but they said they were sure of his commitment to the family.

Inside his room are soccer trophies from Roosevelt High School, where he graduated in 2003. There is a crucifix and a portrait of the Virgin of Guadalupe above his pillow. He kept his pay stubs from Whole Foods in a neat stack, wrapped in a rubber band, in a Tommy Hilfiger box. His father picked it up.

They don't know when he will be home again.

"I love him, not because he helps me a lot. I love him because he's a very, very, very nice person," Jose Caballero said. "I believe in God and the Virgin of Guadalupe that he's going to be out soon. I miss him."

Staff writer Ian Shapira and researcher Magda Jean-Louis also contributed to this report.