By The TimesLedger
The police have made an arrest in the killing of a 22-year-old Woodside waitress on July 30. Police have charged a 16-year-old girl, Augustina Lopez, with shooting Maria Vivar because she refused to join a Mexican gang. The police are searching for two other gang members believed to be involved in the shooting.
All three suspects are allegedly members of a Los Angeles-based gang of Mexican Americans called M18. According to some reports, killing an innocent victim is part of the gang’s initiation rites.
Last week a young girl was killed in the Bronx as she left a christening. The shooters are alleged to be members of a Mexican-American gang that tried to crash the christening party.
It is time for the hammer to come down on the M18, the Latin Kings, the Bloods and the Crips. In Boston, under Operation Nightlight, every branch of law enforcement, including the feds, combined to take back the streets from violent gangs. They made it clear that the government was ready to whatever it takes to put an end to the gang violence.
The gang members soon came to fear this operation. They knew that the response to violence would be massive and swift and the penalties for gang violence would be severe.
The city should do whatever is necessary to end the gang violence before another innocent victim is killed.
