MS-13 Gang Member Is Convicted Of Murder
Victim Was Beaten And Stabbed in the Back

By Theresa Vargas
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 28, 2007

The murder trial of Marvin Rodriguez-Barrera in Prince William County Circuit Court last week focused as much on whether the 19-year-old was a killer as on gang activity in this area.

What do members of the gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, wear? Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Elizabeth Millette asked admitted member Michael Ayala, on day two of the trial.

Blue clothes, long belts, low-top tennis shoes, Nikes or Chuck Taylors, he answered.

What are their hand symbols? she asked.

He contorted his right hand so his forefinger and a pinky pointed outward as the rest of his fingers curled downward.

What about his tattoo depicting three dots?

They are called "my crazy life," Ayala said, adding that they represent the three places an MS-13 member will end up: a hospital, jail and the cemetery.

During the trial, prosecutors were not only arguing that Rodriguez-Barrera plunged a large knife into the back of Charles Angelos Jr., 21, as he lay on the ground being beaten in November but also that he did so while participating in gang activity.

The defendant and witnesses had nicknames such as Snoopy, Smurf, Chimpy, Silent and Sparky. Rodriguez-Barrera was known as Abnormal. Ayala, who testified against him and faces the same charges, is called Mu¿eco, or "doll" in Spanish.

On Thursday, jurors found Rodriguez-Barrera guilty of first-degree murder and the gang charge. They recommended that he serve 37 years in prison for murder and five years for gang participation.

Prosecutors showed that on the night of the killing, Rodriguez-Barrera went to a party on Portwood Turn near Manassas attended by MS-13 members and at one point left with several others to buy marijuana at Angelos's house. When they arrived and were told there was none to buy, Rodriguez-Barrerra threw a paint bucket through a sliding-glass door, shattering it, Ayala testified. The group then returned to the party and a little while later noticed that Angelos and two men were standing outside. That's when Rodriguez-Barrera and the others grabbed weapons and confronted them, prosecutors said.

"They came out like a bunch of rats," Commonwealth's Attorney Paul B. Ebert (D) said. "They all came out bent on mischief."

Angelos and the others ran, but the partygoers gave chase. Ayala testified about what happened next.

He said he was following Angelos when he heard Rodriguez-Barrera yell behind him, "Don't let him get away." Ayala said he then tackled Angelos and began punching him in his face and body as Angelos lay in the fetal position. Ayala said he might have stabbed Angelos in the upper shoulder when he saw "someone come out of nowhere, dive down and stab him in the back."

"After that, I got up and kicked him in the face three or four times," Ayala said.

Assistant Chief Medical Examiner Frances Field testified that Angelos was stabbed four times; the two wounds in his back were fatal. One punctured his lung, and the other entered his abdominal cavity, hitting the liver and kidney, she said.

"There would have been a considerable amount of pain. There would have been bleeding. He would have experienced shortness of breath," Field said. "He may have survived for several minutes."

Afterward, Ayala said, he noticed blood on his sweatpants and on Rodriguez-Barrera's knife, which they dropped in a storm drain with several other knives. Police recovered the items.

Defense attorney Shawn Allen said his client acted on impulse and out of fear because he thought Angelos had a weapon.

"He didn't intend for this to happen," Allen said.

Rodriguez-Barrerra testified that he had the largest knife that night but that when everyone else gave chase, he was scared and didn't initially run. When he did approach Angelos, he said, three other men were there but Angelos seemed intent on pointing something at him that looked like a gun.

"What I felt was panic. I was afraid. I felt chills and terror," he said through a Spanish interpreter. "I had never felt that before. . . . At that moment, I didn't know what was going on, what I was doing, what I was feeling."

He said he then grabbed Angelos by the hand and stabbed him twice.

Millette questioned why, if Rodriguez-Barrerra was so scared, he didn't leave the house through a back door when Angelos first showed or leave later when everyone was running.

"How many opportunities did he have to leave the scene? Too many," she told the jury.

Although Rodriguez-Barrera testified that he was not in a gang, Millette held up a pair of Chuck Taylor shoes taken from him. They had the gang's name written on them.

Detective Brian Wing of the Prince William gang unit and the Northern Virginia Gang Task Force testified that 1997 was about when the first cases involved MS-13 in the region.

More than 2,000 members of MS-13 are estimated to be in Northern Virginia, he said, and they are divided among seven or eight active cliques.

Their hand signal is called devil's horns, and when two members' bring their hands together, it's called touching horns, he said.