Here’s a couple more articles about this. It just gets worse and worse. Looks like they’re MS-13 and there have been machete attacks by this bunch before!
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf? /base/news-12/1186893631111330.xml&coll=1
The 10 towers that make up the Ivy Hill Park apartments soar above western Newark like a city within a city. Home to 10,000 people, it is New Jersey’s largest privately owned apartment complex, an affordable haven for working-class families since the 1950s.
Residents call it a “little United Nations,” a place where kids from Central America play with kids from Sri Lanka, where Bangladeshis mix with Jamaicans, Ukrainians with Brazilians, whites with blacks.
It’s the kind of place, residents say, where serious trouble is still rare enough that it stands out.
José Lachira Carranza and his small band of friends stood out.
Residents say the group, which included at least three teenage boys, drank beer and smoked marijuana in the hallways of the 14-story towers and in the playground of the nearby Mount Vernon School.
In recent months, they turned to strong-arm robbery, ordering passers-by to hand over cash, residents said.
A week ago yesterday, that same group is alleged to have done far worse, shooting four college-bound friends in the back of their heads behind the Mount Vernon School. Three of the four died.
Carranza, 28, and two of the teens have already been charged in the killings.
Yesterday, as the victims were laid to rest and as authorities continued to hunt for others involved in the case, residents described how Ivy Hill Park became the tie between the disparate suspects, the place where they met and allegedly forged a bond through crime.
The residents portrayed Carranza and his cohorts as chronic troublemakers with apparent ties to MS-13, a Central American gang with a growing foothold in Ivy Hill Park. [snip]
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/11/nyregion/11bar.html
“He just went berserk,” said Mr. Torres, who said on Friday that he was injured as he and two other men tried to restrain Mr. Carranza. (Family members and friends had given Mr. Carranza, an illegal immigrant from Peru, the nickname Shaka Zulu, after the African warrior, according to Mr. Torres and others.)
Mr. Carranza was arrested that night, Oct. 1, 2006, on charges of aggravated assault, and later freed on $150,000 bail. He was still awaiting trial in that case and on an unrelated charge of sexual abuse of a child when he was arrested again this week in connection with last Saturday’s brutal gun and machete attack on a group of students in a Newark playground, which left three dead and another hospitalized with a bullet wound to the face.[snip]